Russia has carried out its first direct act of military aggression against Nato. On Wednesday morning, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that a “huge” number of Russian drones violated Poland’s airspace overnight. One of those drones was found in Czosnowska, a village in eastern Poland that is located 40km from Belarus.
Due to joint aerial coordination between Poland and its Nato allies, the threat posed by Russian drones was swiftly defused. Warsaw’s Chopin International Airport has reopened, and flights are expected to resume today. Nonetheless, a state of unease permeates in Poland and across Nato’s eastern flank. In anticipation of further Russian attacks, Poland’s Territorial Defence Force has shortened its reporting time for soldiers in eastern Polish provinces to six hours.
This state of alarm is justified. While western Ukraine was largely spared from the worst atrocities of the Russian invasion, Russia’s efforts to stretch the frontlines have dragged it into the fighting. Ukraine’s fifth-largest city Lviv, which is located only 64km from the Polish border, has witnessed regular Russian drone bombardments. Poland was forced to precautionarily scramble its jets numerous times and now it had to take these actions against a real threat.
The rhetoric emanating from Russia’s tightly controlled media space and ultranationalist ideologues suggests that further aggression towards Poland should be expected. In February 2024, Rossiya-1 anchor Vladimir Solovyov chillingly warned that Russia would show no hesitation in wiping out Polish cities “in an instant.” Council of Foreign and Defence Policy chief Sergey Karaganov’s apocalyptic calls for Russian nuclear escalation have had Poland in their crosshairs.
In terms of Russia’s long-term objectives, we are currently at a fork in the road. The most likely scenario is that President Vladimir Putin is using this escalation to scare European countries out of crippling secondary sanctions and post-war peacekeeper commitments. This aligns with Russia’s past use of nuclear threats, brinkmanship around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the Oreshnik missile to deter further support for Ukraine.
Yet the possibility remains that Russia is the boundaries of Nato’s Article 5 guarantees. Led by Karaganov, hardliners around Putin often argue that Article 5 is not worth the paper it is written on. President Donald Trump’s past dismissal of the need to protect smaller Nato members like Montenegro and conditional approach to security assistance fuelled these arguments.
As Russia is already using GPS jamming, undersea cable cutoffs and destabilizing cyberattacks against the Baltic States, it could be trying to ascertain Nato’s potential response to a new war of aggression on the eastern flank.
If this is the case, Trump is sending Russia precisely the wrong signals. The impending drawdown of the Pentagon’s Section 333 program could deprive the Baltic States of hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance from late 2026 onwards. In response to this news, RT chief Margarita Simonyan gleefully quipped “We sleep easier, as Estonia’s army size collapses from 11 to 8.” Putin has a long history of severely underestimating Western resolve and overestimating Russia’s offensive capabilities. Further actions that encourage this line of thinking risk a repeat of the Ukraine invasion on Nato territory.
In response to the Russian drone strikes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that “the pause in sanctions has gone on far too long” and that a “strong response is needed from Ukraine’s allies.” Zelensky is absolutely right and Trump’s end-of-ultimatum sanctions against Russia cannot arrive sooner.
Russia has carried out its first direct act of military aggression against Nato. On Wednesday morning, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that a “huge” number of Russian drones violated Poland’s airspace overnight. One of those drones was found in Czosnowska, a village in eastern Poland that is located 40km from Belarus.
Due to joint aerial coordination between Poland and its Nato allies, the threat posed by Russian drones was swiftly defused. Warsaw’s Chopin International Airport has reopened, and flights are expected to resume today. Nonetheless, a state of unease permeates in Poland and across Nato’s eastern flank. In anticipation of further Russian attacks, Poland’s Territorial Defence Force has shortened its reporting time for soldiers in eastern Polish provinces to six hours.
This state of alarm is justified. While western Ukraine was largely spared from the worst atrocities of the Russian invasion, Russia’s efforts to stretch the frontlines have dragged it into the fighting. Ukraine’s fifth-largest city Lviv, which is located only 64km from the Polish border, has witnessed regular Russian drone bombardments. Poland was forced to precautionarily scramble its jets numerous times and now it had to take these actions against a real threat.
The rhetoric emanating from Russia’s tightly controlled media space and ultranationalist ideologues suggests that further aggression towards Poland should be expected. In February 2024, Rossiya-1 anchor Vladimir Solovyov chillingly warned that Russia would show no hesitation in wiping out Polish cities “in an instant.” Council of Foreign and Defence Policy chief Sergey Karaganov’s apocalyptic calls for Russian nuclear escalation have had Poland in their crosshairs.
In terms of Russia’s long-term objectives, we are currently at a fork in the road. The most likely scenario is that President Vladimir Putin is using this escalation to scare European countries out of crippling secondary sanctions and post-war peacekeeper commitments. This aligns with Russia’s past use of nuclear threats, brinkmanship around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the Oreshnik missile to deter further support for Ukraine.
Yet the possibility remains that Russia is the boundaries of Nato’s Article 5 guarantees. Led by Karaganov, hardliners around Putin often argue that Article 5 is not worth the paper it is written on. President Donald Trump’s past dismissal of the need to protect smaller Nato members like Montenegro and conditional approach to security assistance fuelled these arguments.
As Russia is already using GPS jamming, undersea cable cutoffs and destabilizing cyberattacks against the Baltic States, it could be trying to ascertain Nato’s potential response to a new war of aggression on the eastern flank.
If this is the case, Trump is sending Russia precisely the wrong signals. The impending drawdown of the Pentagon’s Section 333 program could deprive the Baltic States of hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance from late 2026 onwards. In response to this news, RT chief Margarita Simonyan gleefully quipped “We sleep easier, as Estonia’s army size collapses from 11 to 8.” Putin has a long history of severely underestimating Western resolve and overestimating Russia’s offensive capabilities. Further actions that encourage this line of thinking risk a repeat of the Ukraine invasion on Nato territory.
In response to the Russian drone strikes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that “the pause in sanctions has gone on far too long” and that a “strong response is needed from Ukraine’s allies.” Zelensky is absolutely right and Trump’s end-of-ultimatum sanctions against Russia cannot arrive sooner.