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Before they were a government, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and many of the people who have surrounded him, including his chief of staff and closest adviser, Andriy Yermak, wrote and produced TV shows and movies. Writing scripts may be what they do best.
Recently, they have teamed up with the White House to coproduce a script designed to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. It is an attempt to alter the war by altering the narrative. The narrative is not based on intelligence but, like their previous shows, seems to be a fiction that is only loosely based on reality.
On September 10, at least 19 Russian drones violated Polish airspace. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that “a line has been crossed” and that the “situation brings us the closest we have been to open conflict since World War Two.”
Nine days later, three Russian jets violated Estonian airspace. Estonian foreign minister Margus Tsahkna called the violation “unprecedentedly brazen.”
In both cases, multiple NATO countries took part in the response, including Poland, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Sweden, and Finland. Interestingly, neither NATO response included the United States. Poland and Estonia requested consultations under NATO Article 4, which calls for meetings and discussions on next steps when a member country is threatened.
Zelensky called the incursions “a systematic Russian campaign directed against Europe, against NATO, against the West” and said “it requires a systemic response. Strong action must be taken—both collectively and individually by each nation.” He warned that Putin will “not… finish his war in Ukraine. He will open up some other direction” by attacking another European country. Zelensky told the UN General Assembly that “Ukraine is only the first. And now, Russian drones are already flying across Europe.” President Donald Trump said that NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft if they violate their airspace.
The only challenge to the airspace incursion narrative came from reality. Though Russian drones crossed into Poland, no targets were hit. Polish prime minister Donald Tusk says that none of the drones were armed with warheads. “There is currently no evidence,” Tusk says, “that any of these drones posed a direct threat. So far, none have been identified as combat drones capable of detonating or causing harm.” And Poland says that “Belarus, whose territory the drones were launched from, also sent warning that off-course drones were headed for its airspace.” General Wiesław Kukuła, Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, says that “The Belarusians warned us that drones were heading towards us through their airspace.” He added that the advance warning was “helpful for us.”
Poland was not being attacked by unarmed drones. Russia may have been sending a warning to Europe not to send troops to Ukraine as part of a peace settlement, or the drones could have been sent off course by defensive Ukrainian GPS interference. Despite the public narrative, the private intelligence estimate is that the odds are “50–50” that the drone incursion was intentional. Intelligence about the drones’ flight pattern suggests “they had simply been knocked off course by Ukrainian jamming.” And, though it is not unanimous, a senior Western intelligence official told CNN that “they were ‘leaning’ towards an assessment that the incident was unintentional.”
As for public official and media claims that Russian military jets entered Estonian airspace, that, too, is only loosely based on reality. They did not fly over Estonia. On a flight from Karelia, in the northwest of Russia, to Kaliningrad, the jets deviated by five miles or less from their internationally recognized route over the Baltic Sea along the middle of the Gulf of Finland. They passed near, not mainland Estonia, but Vaindloo, an uninhabited island that belongs to Estonia and that sits 16 miles off its coast. The known factual account is, at least, as close to the account Russian gave the Security Council as it is to the Western narrative.
On September 13, a Russian Geran drone entered Romanian airspace. The Romanian Ministry of National Defense called the incursion “a new challenge to regional security.” Two F-16 fighter jets were scrambled, but the drone exited Romanian airspace. The defense ministry says the drone “did not fly over populated areas or pose imminent danger.” It is not unheard of for Russian drones to pass through Romanian airspace on route to Ukraine. That this drone orbited for about 50 minutes, though, suggests that this incursion could be consistent with a possible pattern of Russia warning European countries not to send troops to Ukraine.”
The narrative of aggressive Russian actions taken against European nations seems to be a reckless attempt to draw Europe, the U.S., and NATO more fully into the war.
After being briefed by U.S. officials, including Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz, about current battlefield conditions and a planned Ukrainian counteroffensive that will require U.S. intelligence support, Trump posted that “Ukraine… is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.” All that is required is the “support of Europe and, in particular, NATO.”
But, here too, there are problems. First, there have been reports that the Trump administration is telling Moscow something different than Trump is posting on Truth Social. The second is that, though Zelensky says that Trump now “clearly understands the situation and is well-informed about all aspects of this war,” it is not clear that he does.
Though Trump is being told that Russia is failing to make significant territorial gains, his briefings miss that Russia is making gains faster than at any point in the war and that the thinly stretched Ukrainian army is becoming porous and vulnerable along the lengthy frontline. A Ukrainian offensive would require the Ukrainian armed forces to outnumber the Russian forces. But the balance is going in the other direction: Ukraine is running out of troops while the Russian armed forces are growing substantially. And while Ukraine is being depleted of weapons, Russia is now producing more arms and ammunition than it needs.
Ukraine is not going to win back all of its territory while on the back foot. Rather, it will continue to slowly lose more. And it is likely not capable of going on the offensive, because it lacks the necessary manpower and weaponry. Though Trump posts about a window to win, the truth is Russia’s advantage will likely grow as the war drags on.
Worse, though, is that the media gave all the attention to Trump’s statement that “Ukraine would be able to take back their Country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that!” It ought to have given more attention than it did to the lines that followed. While promising to “continue to supply weapons to NATO” to give to Ukraine, he referred to NATO as “they.” He said NATO can do “what they want with them.” That sounds like the U.S. will continue selling weapons to Europe for Ukraine but that the U.S. is getting out, an impression made stronger by Trump’s “wish[ing] both countries well” before signing off with “Good luck to them all!” The news was that Trump thinks Ukraine can win. That’s a change in belief, and one that he may not really even hold. But it may not represent a change in policy. The U.S. will still limit its role to selling weapons while it continues to step back.
In an interview with Axios, Zelensky said he had asked Trump for a new weapons system. He said that just having this specific weapon would force Putin to come to the negotiating table even if Ukraine didn’t use it. Heightening the drama of the narrative, Zelensky said he would only reveal what weapons system it was once they were off camera.
That system, it turns out, are Tomahawk missiles that have a range of 1,500 miles. If Ukraine gets the long-range missiles, Zelensky says, then targets in Moscow, including the Kremlin, are very much on the table. This week reports surfaced that Trump is considering providing the cruise missiles to Ukraine.
But again, reality poses an obstacle to the narrative: The U.S. has a low stock of the missiles and produces less than 200 a year, meaning Ukraine is unlikely to get many of them, if any at all. Moreover, Ukraine does not have any of the platforms necessary to launch Tomahawk missiles, so Kiev is unlikely to get them either.
What’s worse is that Russia knows that Ukraine could not utilize the cruise missiles without U.S. intelligence locating targets and guiding the missiles, a potential red line that could draw the U.S. into direct conflict with Russia, something Trump has been loath to do. It is for that very reason that the Tomahawk had been the only weapons system Trump refused to sell to NATO countries to pass on to Ukraine. Moscow may doubt that the U.S. would send Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine and that the weapons system would be a game changer for Ukraine—but it also needs to take the threat seriously.
The play in three acts appears produced to draw the U.S. more fully into the war and to scare Putin into believing that the American position is now that Ukraine can win and that Washington is prepared to provide the weapons until that aim is reached. But since Moscow knows the narrative is only very loosely based on reality, instead of pushing Putin to the negotiating table, the more likely outcome is a reckless and irresponsible flirtation with escalation.