• NATO
• Russia

September 11, 2025, 4:42 PM View Comments ()

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Poland’s response to Russia’s drone incursion, British ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and how Israel’s strike on Qatar may have torpedoed hostage release talks.

‘Great Modernization’

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk pledged on Thursday to continue pursuing a “great modernization program” for his country’s military, just one day after NATO fighter jets shot down several Russian drones over Polish airspace. The statement signals growing Western concern that Moscow seeks to expand its war against Ukraine, even as the Kremlin denies targeting Poland.

“The Russian provocation was nothing more than an attempt to test our capabilities and response. It was an attempt to check the mechanism of operation within NATO and our ability to react,” Polish President Karol Nawrocki said on Thursday. “Thank you, because we passed all these tests.”

Warsaw is expected to receive its first batch of F-35 fighter jets from the United States next year as part of a support package of 32 aircraft that was finalized five years ago. Germany on Thursday announced it would “extend and expand air policing over Poland” in response to Russia’s drone incursion, while the Netherlands and the Czech Republic said they would send defenses to Warsaw.

The Polish Air Navigation Agency announced that it will introduce air traffic restrictions to its eastern border for national security reasons, and beginning at midnight, Poland will close its border crossings with Belarus ahead of that country’s planned joint military exercise with Russia (known as Zapad 2025). Zapad 2025, which will take place from Friday to Tuesday, is expected to involve tens of thousands of Russian and Belarusian troops staging war games near the Polish frontier. Some experts have suggested that the drills are to rehearse an attack on the so-called Suwalki Gap, a less than 65-mile strip of land connecting Poland and Lithuania that sits between Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave. European officials have previously described the sparsely populated area as NATO’s “Achilles’ heel.”

These are “very aggressive scenarios,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said, comparing Zapad 2025 to similar exercises held ahead of Russia’s full-scale invasions of Georgia and Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also warned that Zapad 2025 could be “a cover” for a future Russian assault on the West.

The Polish-Belarusian border will be closed until Dec. 9, according to Warsaw’s Operational Command. Poland will also deploy around 40,000 soldiers to the area ahead of the drills.

Several other Eastern European nations have taken a page out of Poland’s book and closed off their boundaries with Russia and Belarus. Last month, Lithuania declared a no-fly zone along its 56-mile border with Belarus until Oct. 1, with the option to extend it if necessary. This decision was made after two Russian Gerbera drones—one of which was carrying explosives—crashed into Lithuania. And on Thursday, Latvian Defense Minister Andris Spruds said Riga will close the airspace on its eastern borders until Sept. 18, adding that the country’s forces “are permanently on duty in the eastern border area to shoot down aggressor-state drones if necessary.”

That leaves Estonia, which shares a 183-mile border with Russia, as the only Baltic state with no new airspace restrictions. However, on Monday, Estonia’s foreign ministry summoned its Russian charge d’affaires over a Russian Mi-8 helicopter violating Estonian airspace over the Baltic Sea. This was the country’s third such incident this year.

“The line between war and peace has been blurred,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb said on Thursday while meeting with Zelensky in Kyiv. Finland also shares an 830-mile border with Russia that is currently closed to regular traffic.

The United Nations Security Council is expected to hold an emergency meeting on Russia’s drone incursion into Poland on Friday, at Warsaw’s request.

Today’s Most Read

• The Top 10 Trump Administration Foreign-Policy Mistakes by Stephen M. Walt
• Russia Just Attacked NATO. Again. by Christian Caryl
• Israel’s Strategic Declaration by Daniel Byman

What We’re Following

Ties to Epstein. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer fired Peter Mandelson, the British ambassador to the United States, on Thursday over his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Starmer’s decision followed the recent publication of emails from the 2000s showing Mandelson offering his support for Epstein. “I think the world of you,” Mandelson reportedly told Epstein the day before the latter reported to jail in 2008 to begin serving time for soliciting prostitution from a minor.

Mandelson’s removal is the latest in a series of political blows for Starmer’s government. Last week, deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner was also forced to leave office over a discovered tax error on a home purchase. Her removal sparked a major cabinet reshuffle, with Foreign Secretary David Lammy becoming deputy prime minister, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper transitioning to foreign secretary, and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood taking over the Home Office.

Such upheaval is expected to bring added controversy to U.S. President Donald Trump’s upcoming visit to London next week; Trump was friends with Epstein in the 1990s.

Torpedoing cease-fire talks. The U.N. Security Council convened an emergency session on Thursday to address Israel’s strike earlier this week targeting senior Hamas leaders in Qatar. Ahead of the meeting, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the assault on Doha “killed any hope” of Hamas agreeing to release the remaining hostages in Gaza.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed on Wednesday to continue attacking the country’s enemies “everywhere,” saying, “There is no place where they can hide.” Such a threat appears to have worried close Israeli ally the United States, Axios reported on Thursday, with Trump demanding that Netanyahu promise not to strike Qatar again to avoid worsening both Israel’s and the United States’ international reputations.

Meanwhile, Hamas maintains that Israel’s strike will not alter the group’s conditions for a cease-fire deal, which include a refusal to completely disarm. Tuesday’s attack was “an assassination of the entire negotiation process,” Hamas official Fawzi Barhoum said.

Who will lead Nepal? Nepal’s Gen Z-led protest movement has backed Sushila Karki, the country’s first female chief justice, to be interim prime minister. If chosen, she would fill the vacuum left by Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, who resigned on Tuesday after police responded to mass anti-government demonstrations with deadly force. According to Nepal’s health ministry, the death toll in Nepal has since risen to 34 people, with more than 1,300 others injured.

However, not all protesters have rallied behind the popular former chief justice. On Thursday, a faction of the Gen Z movement proposed Kulman Ghising, an electrical engineer credited with solving Nepal’s power crisis, to replace Oli. This group argued that Nepal’s constitution prohibits retired judges from holding positions outside of the judiciary and that Karki, at age 73, is too old to be a Gen Z leader. Ghising is 54 years old.

Protesters on Thursday also called for Nepal to dissolve its parliament and hold new elections. “We may need some changes to the constitution, but we don’t want to dissolve the constitution,” said Ojaswi Raj Thapa, a representative of the protest movement. Demonstrators met with Nepalese army officials for a second day on Thursday to negotiate a path toward peace, even as troops continued to patrol the capital to stop rioting and a nationwide curfew remained in place.

Odds and Ends

NASA may have uncovered evidence of extraterrestrial life. According to a new study published on Wednesday, NASA’s Perseverance rover has obtained a sample of reddish rock found in lake sediment on Mars that contains potential signs of ancient microbial life. Scientists say this is one of the best pieces of evidence ever uncovered that Earth’s closest neighbor may have once harbored life.