What did October 2021 reveal on Europe's eastern edge?

What was happening on Europe's eastern edge by 28 October 2021? Two reports from 26 October, two days earlier, offered a glimpse.

In Ukraine, the Turkish-made Bayraktar reconnaissance and strike drone system was used in combat for the first time in the area of the Joint Forces Operation. The report marked a new step in how the system was employed there.

To the north-west, Poland raised the number of soldiers on its border with Belarus from 6,000 to about 10,000. The aim was to stop further illegal crossings by Middle Eastern migrants, who, according to the report, were being flown in by the Belarusian government. The increase followed an incident over the weekend in which two border guards were hospitalised after a group of 70 migrants stormed a section of the frontier.

The two developments were separate. One concerned the use of a drone in eastern Ukraine; the other concerned a border dispute between Poland and Belarus. Both, however, showed security forces being strengthened or newly used along the region's borders and front lines in the final days of October 2021.