Flávio Bolsonaro surprisingly topped the polls in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday (4 October), making him the favourite to topple President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the run-off in three weeks.
The result is the latest in a series of strong performances by far-right candidates in Latin America. US president Donald Trump has been particularly invested in Brazil.
Despite lagging behind in most pre-election polls, senator Flávio Bolsonaro (45), the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, won around 47 percent of the vote, with votes from more than 99.9 percent of districts counted. Bolsonaro was strongest in the country’s southern states.
President Lula took 45 percent, after performing strongest in Brazil’s north-east, and advanced to the second round, to be held on 25 October.
Latin American experts believe thatBolsonaro will likely win the second round as most of the candidates who failed to reach the runoff are ideologically closer to him than Lula.
Although voting is compulsory in Brazil, one in five of eligible voters did not take part in the first round.
This year’s election has been widely described as one of the most significant in modern Brazilian history, its outcome exceptionally important for the United States and Europe. It is also key for the rest of the planet, given the global impact of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.
Conservative forces aligned with Bolsonaro also made gains in the elections to Congress. Jair Bolsonaro’s wife Michelle won a senate seat. She had previously fallen out with Flávio but the two have since publicly reconciled. And the former president’s son Carlos Bolsonaro also won a seat, while another son, Jair Renan, was elected to the lower house of congress.
Trump’s stake in Brazil
Though the campaign focused primarily on domestic issues, particularly the economy, security and corruption, Trump’s influence loomed large.
Trump criticised Brazil’s judiciary when Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years following an unsuccessful attempted coup after he narrowly lost the 2022 election to Lula. The former Brazilian president is under house arrest due to health problems, and a court ruled he could not stand.
The US president described the trial of Bolsonaro as a “witch hunt”. Although Trump did not openly endorse Flávio Bolsonaro, Bolsonaro played up his ideological proximity to him.
In contrast, Lula sharply criticised Trump and built a reputation as a leader unafraid to stand up to Trump. Americas Quarterly editor Brian Winter said some in Brazil joke that Lula’s most effective surrogate is Trump.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva delivers a speech after learning the official results election on Sunday (4 October).
Lula is known for his multipolar foreign policy. He seeks “pragmatic relations” with the US, China, Russia and others. Lula maintains friendly relations with Vladimir Putin, although he recently spoke out against the invasion of Ukraine.
If Bolsonaro were to win the second round, Brazil would probably join a coalition of countries conducting military operations against drug cartels alongside the Pentagon. It is a controversial initiative, and like other left leaders in the region, Lula has rejected it.
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Kyiv is currently in a worse situation than Kharkiv when it comes to air-raid alerts.
The Russians struck the National Academy of Sciences, forcing scientists to flee through windows. Why did they target it?
What upgrades they are testing on their Geran-5 drones.
According to Rybar, Russia’s goal in attacking Kyiv is also to persuade Europe to stop helping Ukraine.
Maps of the day: The situation near Lyman and the gap between the Russian ministry and reality.
Videos of the day: an attack on the border crossing with Poland; footage from the cockpit of an Su-25; a robot avoids a drone; Russians flee among a crowd of civilians.
Kyiv has experienced its worst attacks since the start of the war in recent weeks. According to an analysis by French OSINT analyst Clément Molin, the capital was hit by 155 Russian missiles and drones in September, compared with 113 in August and 21 in March.
Denník N reporter Mirek Tóda, who visited Ukraine last week, said that Kyiv was currently worse off than Kharkiv in terms of air attacks, even though Kharkiv lies just 30 km from the front line.
Even smaller, FPV (first-person view) drones have recently begun flying on Kharkiv’s outskirts, hunting cars, but the number of air-raid alerts and air strikes there has still been far lower than in Kyiv in recent weeks.
Molin added that the Russians had struck the heart of the capital 10 times a day in recent days.
The Russian independent group Conflict Intelligence Team wrote that Kyiv and its surroundings would probably account for the highest number of civilians killed and injured anywhere in Ukraine in September — more than in the Donetsk, Kherson, or Kharkiv regions.
An at a time when attacks causing casualties occur every day, it is becoming harder for foreign journalists to engage readers with reports about an attack on the Ukrainian capital.
But on Monday, however, the Russians managed to do so.
During the working day, they struck the historic building of Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences. It caught fire, and footage of scientists and other employees attempting to climb out through smoke-filled windows circulated around the world.
A Russian strike against the building of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. A rescue operation is underway: crews are putting out the fire and searching for people who may have been trapped inside. All services are deployed. Today in Kyiv, a pharmaceutical company and… pic.twitter.com/ccfIHnGFNg
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) September 28, 2026
The images of people standing on a ledge may have recalled those seen after the 11 September attacks, although the terrorists then struck skyscrapers more than 100 storeys high in New York.
Horrific scenes out of Kyiv this morning as Russia used a jet-powered drone to blow up Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences. People are escaping through windows as the building burns. Just like they target kindergartens and schools, now they are bombing science. pic.twitter.com/yvwzLz9DXe
🚨 BREAKING: Terrifying footage captured people climbing out of windows after a Russian attack struck the National Academy of Sciences in central Kyiv in broad daylight.
The attack killed one person and injured at least three others, triggering a massive blaze. pic.twitter.com/wiWTU51QaL
The historic building had only three floors. Thanks in part to this and the firefighters’ rapid response, only one person was killed and six were injured.
It is quite likely that the attack on the Academy of Sciences was not accidental and that the Russians were targeting an important individual.
Ukrainian analyst Viktor Kovalenko believed that the Russians had wanted to kill 86-year-old Volodymyr Horbulin. He is one of the architects of Ukraine’s missile and space programme.
He headed Ukraine’s space agency in the 1990s and, for five years under President Leonid Kuchma, served as secretary of the National Security Council. Despite his age, he remains active: he is vice-president of the National Academy of Sciences and focuses on security issues.
And the elderly scientist was in the building at the time of the attack. The drone hit a room one floor above his office. He sustained only minor injuries, but his assistant was killed.
A few hours later, the Russians struck the building of the Dobrobut medical centre, which caught fire. Several people were reported injured there.
Russia bombed the Dobrobut Medical Center in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, this afternoon, setting the facility ablaze. pic.twitter.com/gs0d1X3eB5
These attacks took place in the wider city centre and were felt by the EU ambassador to Kyiv, Slovakia’s Katarína Mathernová.
“Just moments ago, an explosion jolted me out of my chair in my Kyiv office. It was the loudest blast I have experienced here in three years. A jet-powered drone struck a building around 200 metres from the EU delegation. It happened in broad daylight. The target was a hospital,” Mathernová wrote.
While the Russians once attacked Kyiv mainly at night, attacks are now also taking place during the day. Although they target military and industrial sites as well, they frequently hit civilian facilities where many people are present during daytime.
“Today in Kyiv, a person can be killed in a supermarket, at a university, at a petrol station, on the street or at work. The campaign of indiscriminate attacks targeting the centre of the capital is unprecedentedly violent. The Russians are targeting data centres and regularly miss their targets,” French analyst Clément Molin wrote.
“What Russia is doing is pure terrorism. And we should treat neither its state leadership nor its military forces any differently. Why should we continue pretending that it is possible to negotiate with such terrorists on equal terms?” German analyst and former journalist Julian Röpcke wrote.
“Nothing expresses the ‘fight against Nato expansion’ quite as clearly as bombing the historic building of Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences in central Kyiv, forcing ordinary scientists to jump from windows to escape death in the flames,” Ukrainian journalist Illia Ponomarenko added.
The Russians are attacking the capital virtually constantly. It is not merely one or two attacks a day. As Ukrainian analyst Bohdan Myroshnykov wrote on Sunday, Kyiv had been without an air-raid alert for only 5 hours and 55 minutes in the previous 24 hours.
“The current alert has lasted 8 hours and 20 minutes. The enemy deliberately launches drones in order to prolong the alert. Once they arrive in Kyiv, they begin circling over the city and its suburbs to keep people on edge for even longer,” he wrote.
According to him, the main weapons currently used by the Russians to attack Kyiv are Geran-5 jet drones. These are essentially smaller — though still six-metre-long — cruise missiles. By contrast, Geran-4 jet drones have the classic delta-wing shape of older Shahed drones.
Myroshnykov wrote that Ukrainians had more or less learned how to shoot down Geran-4 drones, but were having difficulties with the fifth series. While they intercept Geran-4s with an effectiveness of 70 to 80 percent, the rate for Geran-5s is only 50 to 65 percent. “The fourth series is intercepted en masse while approaching the Kyiv agglomeration, whereas the fifth is only intercepted within it,” the analyst wrote.
Last week, we wrote that Ukrainians had released the first videos showing them shooting down jet-powered Geran drones, including Geran-5s, using jet-powered interceptor drones capable of matching their speed. A video has now emerged of another new drone that apparently can already do this.
The problem, however, is that none of these drones is yet being mass-produced. Ukrainians therefore do not have enough of them to counter the growing number of jet-powered Gerans that the Russians are launching at Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities — as well as other targets.
“There are prototypes that have delivered varying results, but considerable effort is needed to bring a prototype into large-scale serial production. Sometimes this is impossible because access to certain components is limited,” former adviser to Ukraine’s defence ministry Serhii Sternenko wrote.
“It took us 3.5 years to find a more or less reliable anti-drone defence against conventional Shaheds. We began this path five months ago in the case of jet-powered drones. It may take us eight to 10 months to find a reliable anti-drone defence,” Myroshnykov wrote.
Ukraine’s defence minister, Yevhen Khmara, called on European partners at a meeting of his EU counterparts to help finance these interceptor drones, which have proved to be the best defence against conventional Gerans.
The Russians are also becoming increasingly creative in their efforts to strike targets in Ukraine. Serhii Beskrestnov, another former adviser to the defence minister, shared a video showing the Russians striking Incom’s office building in Kyiv. What is notable is that they filmed the strike themselves using a drone with a high-quality camera.
“The enemy attacked Incom’s office with a Geran-5 missile, while at the same time a jet-powered Shahed flew over Kyiv, circling above the attack site at an altitude of almost three km. It served as a radio-signal relay for the Geran-5 missile while also recording — and immediately transmitting — video of the attack on Incom. This Shahed then flew out of Kyiv and destroyed a McDonald’s warehouse,” Beskrestnov wrote.
He added that he was convinced the two operators had been sitting next to one another.
The Defence Express website also published an article about the Russians fitting their newest Geran-5-K5 jet drones with the Susanin navigation system, first reported by a Russian Telegram account. The system works by comparing current camera images with pre-recorded imagery.
“This enables the Geran-5 K5 to determine its coordinates even when satellite navigation is unavailable,” Defence Express wrote.
However, it works better during the day than at night, as it needs current images of objects on the ground.
It is often said that the Russians attack Ukrainian cities because they are unable to advance at the front. The aim may be to lower Ukrainians’ morale, degrade their economy and force them to surrender and accept Russian terms.
Although the attacks on Kyiv have been the worst since March 2022, they do not yet appear to have shifted Ukrainian public opinion. According to one recent poll, people were most concerned about government corruption (50 percent), with Russian air attacks only in second place (40 percent). Naturally, the poll was conducted not only in Kyiv but also in places where attacks are less frequent.
Recent polling by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) indicates that the most worrying issue for Ukrainians right now is government corruption (at 50%), followed by Russian missile and drone attacks (40%) and unprofessionalism and incompetence of the authorities… pic.twitter.com/OvEbFz5jNQ
The attacks are often compared to the “war of the cities”, during which both countries attacked each other’s cities in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war. According to the Russian propaganda channel Rybar, they are also intended to undermine support from Europe.
This may be a somewhat far-fetched theory, but it is worth mentioning because it may indicate that people in the Kremlin think along these lines as well.
Rybar asks what the attacks mean for Ukraine’s “sponsors”. In its view, it is time for them to write off Ukraine, because there is no point pouring money into such a country. A “Marshall Plan”, it says, would be “pointless”.
“The more effective the strikes by the Russian armed forces in the framework of the ‘war of the cities’, the more likely the scenario in which the EU, even in the event of a ‘freezing’ of the situation, will ‘write off’ so-called Ukraine because further support for it is unsustainable. And without sponsors, the Kyiv regime cannot survive,” Rybar wrote.
This might perhaps apply if it were a war on the other side of the world, in which the EU was supporting one side. But the war over Ukraine is a conflict on the EU’s border, and there is a high likelihood that, if Ukraine does not stop the Russians, scientists will be fleeing from burning windows in Tallinn, Vilnius or Warsaw.
Maps of the day
On Monday, we wrote about how Ukrainians were gradually releasing parts of Operation Vivaldi, which is liberating territory north of Lyman. Russia’s defence ministry, as well as the Russian state agency Ria Novosti, continue to maintain their claims that the front line lies much further west.
This map compares official Russian claims with reality. At the point of greatest divergence, the maps differ by 40 km. For comparison, that is roughly the distance between Trnava and Bratislava. Overall, the Russians claim to control 1,360 square km more in this area than they actually do.
The yellow line on this map shows what the current official Russian maps portray the situation in the Lyman direction as (or what they would now consider the Izyum direction).
At it's furthest point, their claimed frontline is 40 km (!) west of my frontline. This was achieved… pic.twitter.com/Nd2SP3HJur
Russian Z-bloggers and propagandists are, however, closer to reality. The Two Majors channel wrote that the situation was “continuing to deteriorate”.
“The enemy is conducting counterattacks and trying to push Russian troops back beyond the Zherebets. (…) The Russian foothold west of the river has shrunk,” it said.
According to the channel, Ukrainians had entered the village of Zarichne from several directions, while fighting was also under way for Yampil.
According to Two Majors, this sector remains one of the most problematic parts of the front from the Russian perspective. The Russians’ aim is to stabilise it and retain at least some units on this bank of the river.
The Rybar channel wrote that Ukrainians had intensified fire on the few places where the river can be crossed, as well as attacks on logistics far behind the front line.
“Despite the stabilisation measures that have been launched, the situation remains extremely difficult and tense. The enemy’s gradual release of footage is a tool of information pressure, but it conceals a very real deterioration of the situation in the Lyman sector,” Rybar wrote.
Videos of the day
In addition to Kyiv, the Russians are attacking other parts of Ukraine. They again struck the Yahodyn border crossing on the Polish-Ukrainian border. A Geran-5 drone landed in a car park, around one km from Polish territory.
Recently, after a similar attack in which they hit a train, they also struck a petrol station 800 metres from the crossing. These are the attacks closest to Polish territory since the start of the war, not counting drones and a Kh-101 missile that have already entered Poland.
An enemy UAV struck near the "Yagodin" checkpoint on the border with Poland, according to social media posts pic.twitter.com/COrcYKrUoJ
Footage from the cockpit of a Ukrainian Su-25 military aircraft during a mission in the east. The pilot flew low over the ground, then climbed higher, released a French AASM guided bomb and turned away.
Rare cockpit view from a Ukrainian Air Force Su-25 Frogfoot on a strike mission over the eastern front, screaming low over the ground before pitching up, clawing for altitude, and launching a French AASM guided bomb at a Russian target. pic.twitter.com/DmX2Pvfftw
Ukrainian robot operators are also assisted by aerial reconnaissance drones during missions. This apparently helped the operator in the video skilfully evade a Russian drone at the last moment.
Ukraine’s Khartia Brigade released a video which it said showed Russian soldiers in civilian clothes, mixed in with actual civilians, trying to escape through a pipeline.
🚨 BREAKING: Drone footage from Ukraine’s Khartia Brigade reveals likely Russian soldiers disguised in civilian clothing, attempting to escape alongside elderly hostages and children.
By Tuesday (22 September), Russia had verifiably lost 24,138 pieces of heavy equipment, compared with 24,098 on Monday (14 September). Of these, Ukrainians destroyed 19,105 (19,065) pieces, 1,000 (1,000) were damaged, crews abandoned 1,194 (1,194), and the Ukrainian army captured 2,839 (2,839). These included 4,448 (4,447) tanks, of which 3,353 (3,352) were destroyed in combat.
Ukraine had lost 12,175 (12,143) pieces of equipment, of which 9,579 (9,551) were destroyed, 702 (698) damaged, 695 (695) abandoned and 1,199 (1,199) captured. These included 1,464 (1,462) tanks, of which 1,125 (1,120) were destroyed in combat.
Note: Neither side regularly reports its own casualties or destroyed equipment. Ukraine publishes daily figures for Russian casualties and destroyed equipment, which cannot be independently verified. In this overview, we use data from theOryx project, which has compiled a list of equipment losses documented exclusively by photographs since the start of the war.
This story is a part of the weekly newsletter about security, defence, and tech in the eastern flank of Nato, How we cee it.
Over the past few weeks, a new wave of fear has engulfed Europe. A number of intelligence and government officials have spoken out, saying Russia could possibly attack a Nato country within months, not years.
On 18 September, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk warned that Russia is planning hybrid strikes with drones or rockets on European countries that support Ukraine, such as Poland.
Two days later, Czech intelligence chief Michal Koudelka told the Guardian that, as well as increased drone activity, a small-scale invasion of Nato territory bordering Russia could be part of the Kremlin’s plans.
Then, last Thursday, Denmark’s defence intelligence service said that Russia is likely to intensify its hybrid war against the West in the coming months, with more frequent attacks against Nato countries.
On the same day, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Poland’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski said, according to TVP World: “We are receiving information … that Russia is preparing something big this year.”
This is not the first time a wave of comments like this has appeared. A similar situation arose last year, when various officials in Europe took turns escalating their rhetoric about the Russian threat.
It is possible that they are speaking out again because new information has surfaced within the intelligence community. The communication goal could be letting Russia know that they know. Much like CIA director John Ratcliffe’s visit to Moscow last month, this could be an effort to make sure Russia doesn’t miscalculate.
The warnings also come in a different context from last year, when the Baltic countries were sounding the alarm. Russia has noticeably been turning up the temperature of its activity around Europe.
Back in July, a cruise missile crashed in Poland. According to experts, it was not a misguided missile, but one deliberately aimed at Poland. Then, in early August, a drone carrying an explosive device was discovered at Leipzig/Halle Airport in eastern Germany, close to Ukrainian cargo planes.
Germany’s interior minister Alexander Dobrindt said the Leipzig airport attack followed the “well-established pattern of Russian hybrid operations in Europe,” the BBC reported.
According to German investigators, who spoke to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the incident was also connected to other events, such as an attempted arson attack on a drone manufacturer in eastern Slovakia, and an arson attack in Munich on September 3, when several incendiary devices were thrown from a passing car onto a construction site near the headquarters of defence firms Rohde & Schwarz and Helsing.
In fact, there have been so many different incidents recently that the semi-regular drone incursions into Romania and the Baltics have become almost normalised and struggle to make headlines anymore.
Hypothetical scenarios abound
Scenarios of where Russia could take its hybrid attacks next are as abundant as onlookers’ creativity allows. They range from small attacks on factories, through the seizure of a small piece of land by an elite drone unit, all the way to the capture of the Suwałki corridor – a strategic piece of land between the Baltic states and mainland Europe.
Most recently, the CIA warned that while all eyes had so far been on the Baltics, Russia may be preparing a drone strike against Spain, France, and Italy.
According to Marko Mihkelson, chairman of the Estonian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, the snowball of speculation about an imminent Russian attack on Europe is gathering pace.
But as he sees it, isolated facts are being mixed with wishful thinking, worst-case scenarios and, at times, little more than the need to grab attention.
As he wrote in an opinion piece for the Estonian news agency ERR: “Russia understands that it can confuse and paralyse us through information operations alone. Constant speculation about the Baltic states and Poland risks creating the impression that this is primarily a problem for two or three countries on Russia’s doorstep, while the rest of Europe can somehow remain untouched.”
According to Mihkelson, Russia’s campaign against the West would not necessarily begin with a conventional attack.
It could start by undermining Nato from within: interfering in elections, amplifying polarising narratives, exploiting political divisions, and spreading fear. It could seek to isolate Ukraine by limiting Western support, and then test Nato’s willingness to stand together.
As for worries that Russia will attempt to grab land from the Baltics or Poland, there are no significant material or military changes to note along the borders.
Belarus did hold a four-day military exercise near its border with the Suwałki corridor in mid-September, but that is nothing close to the signals we were getting from Russia just before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Back then, physical military infrastructure was being constructed ahead of the attack.
There are also no significant changes in the Russian military’s posture to launch a land attack against the Baltics.
Estonian government officials confirm this. According to Estonia’s minister of defence, Martin Herem, its assessment of the Russian threat remains unchanged.
That means Russia’s main effort remains focused on its war in Ukraine, and neither Estonia, Denmark, nor other Nato allies currently see a threat requiring raised military readiness.
Military experts in Lithuania also see no signs of new escalation. This doesn’t mean Russia won’t continue to be dangerous. It means that Russia has been engaged in provocations against Nato countries for years already, and similar behaviour will continue.
“No one is currently planning to conquer us – not at this moment, nor this year. In this case, specific, very precise attacks or provocations are more likely, designed not so much to cause physical damage as to sow serious panic in people’s minds,” Deividas Šlekys, a professor at Vilnius University’s Institute of Political Science and International Relations, told the Lithuanian wire LRT on Monday (28 September).
And so, while last autumn it was the Baltic states sounding the alarm about a potential Russian attack, now their officials are looking to calm the panic about their aggressive neighbour.
Hace tiempo que el paisaje visual de Irán empezó a cambiar. De forma paulatina, los diferentes colores de los pañuelos que cubrían las cabezas de miles de mujeres dejaron de despuntar entre la multitud. Ahora sus melenas rubias, castañas o negras se dejan acariciar por el viento. También sus brazos al aire son besados por el sol. Las calles de Irán se han transformado poco a poco en un lugar menos hostil para las iraníes. Siempre había habido algunas que se atrevían a desafiar las leyes de vestimenta del régimen de los ayatolás, pero ahora cada vez son más. Algunos sitúan el origen de este cambio en una trágica jornada de hace cuatro años cuando la joven Mahsa Jina Amini murió tras ser detenida y torturada por no llevar bien puesto el velo islámico. Su pérdida desató una revolución.
Cada día en la Cisjordania ocupada, la violencia toma distintas formas, aunque suelen ser las mismas. A diario se registran ataques de colonos a palestinos, redadas militares, tierras expropiadas, nuevos puestos de control, y una acuciante crisis económica que ahoga a las familias palestinas. Este lunes la organización israelí B'Tselem ha publicado un informe donde analiza toda esta violencia para darle un nombre: el "proyecto de eliminación". La investigación más exhaustiva hasta la fecha sobre la política israelí en Cisjordania concluye que "Israel emplea cinco mecanismos que se refuerzan mutuamente para desmantelar la existencia colectiva palestina en la zona".
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