On Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, 19 Russian drones flew into Polish airspace. Dutch planes were on duty and the Royal Netherlands Air and Space Force scrambled to shoot the drones down with F-35 fighter jets. Russian drones that violated Polish airspace were “clearly set on this course” and “did not have to fly this route to reach Ukraine”, said the German defence minister, Boris Pistorius.
Polish airspace has been violated repeatedly since the war started, but nothing on this scale along the eastern flank of Nato and the European Union. “Until now, only very occasionally has the odd missile or drone strayed into the territory of a Nato country – well really Poland is the country we’re talking about,” said Dan Sabbagh. “But this was a significant provocation – it was a deliberate act. And it’s a massive test of Nato resolve and political will. It’s absolutely an escalation of the war.”
On Wednesday morning, Polish armed forces said a search for possible crash sites was continuing and urged people not to approach, touch or move any suspicious objects as they could contain hazardous material. It appeared one drone travelled as far as 300km inside Polish territory before crashing in a field near Mniszków. Warsaw’s Chopin airport suspended flights for several hours.
‘Designed to antagonise’
The incident suggests Russia is testing European resolve: if Nato responds differently from the US, Russians could spy an opportunity to cause more trouble, said Dan.
“All of this was designed to provoke, cause fear, antagonise and to stoke division,” he said. “Russia has shown over three and a half years that it is pretty careful of Nato. It hasn’t really messed around with Nato countries. People were worried about the possibility of spillover – even in the cyber domain – and that hasn’t happened. Then suddenly you’re in a scenario where you’re seeing a significant event.”
It comes less than a month after Donald Trump and Putin’s summit in Alaska in which there were suggestions the Kremlin was ready to strike a deal for peace.
Three days ago, Russia made its largest aerial attack on Ukraine since the war began, hitting a key government building in Kyiv for the first time. “It shows that whatever happened in Alaska didn’t go very far. After Alaska, we saw maybe 10 days in which it was relatively quiet. And there seemed to be some effort, or Trump made a brief effort, to try to persuade Ukraine to give up more territory or something, and then when all that washed out, what you’ve seen is quite rapid Russian escalation.”
At the E5 defence ministers’ meeting in London between France, Germany, the UK, Italy and Poland, the UK defence secretary, John Healey, said: “We face a new era of threat. War in Europe, rising Russian aggression, and last night, Putin hit a new level of hostility against Europe.”
What is Putin’s gameplan?
Russia is pretty well employed fighting a ground war in Ukraine with 600,000-plus troops, suffering a lot of casualties and not making a lot of progress, said Dan. Estimates suggest more than one million Russian troops have been killed or injured since the invasion began in February 2022. The conflict is having a continued toll on citizens with inflation running at 9.5% in Russia.
Dan said: “Russia doesn’t have the capacity to launch a war against Poland or Nato. It would be a reckless and foolhardy act by the Kremlin. But if there isn’t some kind of Nato response, or perhaps further economic sanctions, then we’re going to have a scenario where no doubt we should see more drones flying accidentally-on-purpose into Nato airspace.”
Dan also thinks it might suggest that Russia thinks US support of Ukraine is faltering or uncertain. “The Kremlin won’t be thinking it’s on some kind of suicide mission. It’s feeling very confident, like it can cause trouble in eastern Europe,” he said. “The question that hangs in my mind is Did Putin come away from Alaska thinking that Trump wasn’t serious about Nato, or particularly about helping Ukraine?”
The US could end up with two choices: either get increasingly involved in Europe (which Trump is disinclined to do) or to pressurise Ukraine into agreeing some kind of peace on Russian terms in order to end the war and prevent this sort of spillover, according to Dan. “I don’t have a clearcut answer, but perhaps the goal is to create a sense that the Ukraine war is fundamentally destabilising the east of Europe.”
The White House said Trump would speak to Poland’s president. The US ambassador to Nato, Matthew Whitaker, reiterated backing for Warsaw. “We stand by our Nato allies in the face of these airspace violations and will defend every inch of Nato territory,” Whitaker posted on X.
What will Nato do?
Poland asked Nato to activate treaty Article 4, which states that members will consult with each other if the territory, political independence, or security of any of them is threatened. Since Nato was created in 1949, Article 4 has been invoked seven times.
It is a big deal that Poland has requested this, because it brings the chance of a more urgent direction being triggered: Article 5.
“This is one step below the mayday mayday mayday, which states that an attack on one member should be considered an attack on all. There has only ever been a yesvote on Article 5 once: on behalf of the US after 9/11,” said Dan. Because Ukraine is not a part of Nato, the February 2022 invasion did not trigger Article 5, but there have long been concerns about the war spilling over into neighbouring Nato countries.
Nato members are holding consultations under Article 4; it is not clear whether consultations will lead to a formal decision under Article 5. There is no time limit on how long such consultations take.
In any case, this move by Russia is likely to result in more support for Poland, with stepped-up policing, air defences, more patrols in the Nordic-Baltic region, and there might be some movement of warships, says Dan. “Obviously a lot of this military manoeuvring is just signalling, right? It’s just saying ‘Back off’,” he said.
