By launching a volley of drones into Poland, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his military chiefs were able to not only test Europe’s resolve, but also its response to such a situation. Photo / Getty Images
The blast from the Russian drone smashing into his neighbour’s house jolted the old man out of his bed.
He rushed outside into the village, looked up and saw the fighter jet that shot it down tearing across the sky in a blur.
For the 200 or so residents of Wyryki-Wola in Poland’s east, the distant noises of the war in Ukraine across the nearby border are normally a perverse lullaby.
But shortly after 7am local time on Wednesday, in a rude awakening, the war came to them.
The wreckage, smouldering in their sleepy village, was one of 19 Russian Shahed drones that entered deep into Polish airspace and were either shot down or smashed into sites in central and eastern Poland in an unprecedented Russian move.
It was a moment of military history; the first time Nato forces have engaged Russia over allied territory with fighter jets scrambled to shoot down the drones.
It also exposed how much Vladimir Putin is willing to risk in order to test Nato resolve, resilience and appetite for an escalation of the war in Ukraine to one with the wider West.
But it will always be remembered in Wyryki-Wola village for one elderly couple’s narrow escape when drone debris fell through their roof.
Had Tomasz and Alicja Wesolowska not been sleeping on the ground floor, their names could have easily been added to the growing roster of Putin’s victims.
“A military plane flew over here, spun around twice, and then there was a gunshot. And the drone fell on to the roof,” said Stanisław Staszewski, a neighbour.
“There was a huge cloud of smoke and the stench of sulphur … It’s good that they were on the ground floor, because if they had slept upstairs, it would have been bad.”
The couple stoically went to a local community centre to have breakfast but then came back home to inspect the damage.
The cost of repairing the roof of their farmhouse is estimated at £100,000 ($227,000).
The Polish military had received reports of a massive drone attack being launched by Russian forces on Ukraine the night before.
Such reports are not unusual but Warsaw increased its awareness levels in any case.
Ground systems were activated and surveillance aircraft were dispatched into the skies with the help of Nato allies, including the Netherlands and Italy.
Two Dutch F-35 and two Polish F-16 fighter jets were dispatched to the area, along with a series of helicopters.
Around 11.30pm, the first violation of Polish – and therefore Nato – airspace by the drones and Gerbera decoy UAVs, was recorded.
The last Iranian-designed Shahed drone crossed the border at 6.30am and was destroyed 15 minutes later by Nato’s jets.
Warsaw’s Chopin airport was temporarily closed during the incident, with Polish citizens urged to stay at home and await further instructions.
Military officials in Warsaw have so far confirmed at least three drones were downed, with a fourth being investigated. Others simply crashed into the ground.
Polish investigators located eight crash sites – either from downed Russian drones or Nato defensive missile debris.
Chilling images began to circulate from across Poland showing the ruined husks of Russian drones lying in farmers’ fields and meadows of long, yellowed grass.
Photographs from one unidentified crash site in eastern Poland showed a gaping hole in the roof of a residential building, with chairs, drawers and other furniture lying smashed on the ground and surrounded by dust.
Another significant impact site was that of Mniszków, which has a population of 600 and is in central Poland.
The village is only around 95km south of Warsaw and marks the crash site where Putin’s drones appear to have travelled the furthest.
“I was woken up by sirens. I thought there had been an accident,” a resident told Polish media.
“What irritates me most is that we’re in central Poland. And Russian drones have reached all the way here.”
Just 20km to the east of Wyryki-Wola, Polish investigators were yesterday seen inspecting a cornfield where another drone is suspected to have crash-landed.
The impact site was near the village of Kodeniec, which is roughly 50km away from the border with Ukraine.
Several military trucks and a police van could be seen parked outside the stretch of cornfield where the debris is understood to have fallen. More than a dozen Ukrainian soldiers were also on the scene to secure a perimeter.
Once the smoke had cleared from the unprecedented assault, it became clear that no one had been killed or injured.
Unsurprisingly, Donald Tusk, Poland’s Prime Minister, was still furious.
He said the drone wave had brought the West and Russia “closer [to conflict] than at any time since the Second World War”.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian President, said the attack was “no accident”.
His Western allies joined in with a chorus of condemnation of Russia.
John Healey, Britain’s Defence Secretary, said the Armed Forces would examine how to bolster Nato’s air defence over Poland, promising to “play our part to help secure the safety of your people”.
Mark Rutte, the Nato Secretary-General, described the incident in Poland as “absolutely reckless”.
Tusk triggered the Alliance treaty’s rarely used Article 4 to call an emergency meeting of allies.
Article 4 means members must discuss a perceived danger, while the famous Article 5, the cornerstone of the alliance, is a call on allies to view an attack on one as an attack on all.
By launching a volley of drones into Poland, Putin and his military chiefs were able to not only test Europe’s resolve, but also its response to such a situation.
Would it be enough to trigger Article 5, which has a deliberately vague definition to create a sense of strategic ambiguity?
The answer Putin discovered was no, giving him intelligence on how far he can push the alliance without triggering all-out war.
But he would also have discovered Nato is ready to respond to his threats.
Oana Lungescu, who served as Nato’s longest-running spokesman and is now a distinguished fellow at the Rusi think-tank, told the Telegraph: “If Russia wanted to test Nato defences, the alliance was ready, with co-ordinated military action against the drones over Poland and an urgent meeting under Article 4”.
Such knowledge will be useful for Putin as he faces the prospect of a frozen war in Ukraine and a possible deployment of European peacekeepers there.
Debates continue over what protections any troops deployed by Nato countries will be afforded by the alliance while on their mission to protect a future ceasefire.
There will also be a number of military bases in Poland and other eastern European countries used to co-ordinate those deployments.
The Polish offer of such support was made clear after last week’s meeting of the Coalition of the Willing in Paris.
“This is more than a careless, navigation error from the Russians,” said Mick Ryan, a retired major-general in the Australian Army.
“It would be better described as ‘probing’ – in case Nato establishes bases in eastern Poland to support a future presence in Ukraine.”
At Nato’s headquarters in Brussels, news of the quashed drone incursions was met with a sigh of relief.
For decades, the alliance’s military planners had been putting in place a series of plans to defend its territory from a Russian attack.
Rutte later revealed the mission used fighter jets from Poland and the Netherlands, an Italian Awacs surveillance aircraft, and a German Patriot air-defence system.
Taking down Russian drones without communications issues between the multinational deployment of aircraft was seen as a resounding success.
Amid a whirlwind of political rhetoric claiming Nato had come under a direct attack by Moscow, the alliance’s defence chiefs decided not to escalate the conflict.
During a meeting of the North Atlantic Council, Nato’s political body, which had been long-planned, but upgraded to hear Poland’s Article 4 concerns, ambassadors reached the conclusion that the incident on the eastern frontier was not an attack.
“We should see this for what it appears to be … not an attack,” an alliance source told the Telegraph.
A Nato source said that the mood is “keep calm and carry on” after a successful air defence mission.
“Things had worked as they should,” the source said. “We responded quickly and with resolve.”
A second source added: “They’d be correct in saying there is no panic”.
John Foreman, a former British defence attache in Moscow, said Article 4 had achieved its purpose, allowing those in charge to de-escalate any tensions over the incursion.
“The benefit of consensus is to calm everything down,” he said, referring to Nato’s unanimous decision-making processes.
Tusk also told Poles not to panic at the “large-scale provocation”.
“At this moment, I can say that this first test of our Army, our allies and also the procedures prepared for such an eventuality – this test has been passed and the procedures, the plans prepared for such a case are working,” he said.
As for the Russians, they turned to their old playbook of disinformation, delay, and denial.
The Russian Defence Ministry claimed it had “no plans” to hit targets in the Nato country and said the UAVs did not have enough flight range to cross the border into Poland.
The ministry added that it was ready to “hold consultations” with Poland on the issue.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry described allegations that its drones deliberately crossed into Polish territory as a “myth”.
“We have no doubt that this was not an accidental event,” Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish Foreign Minister, told reporters.
Karol Narwocki, the Polish President, met United States President Donald Trump in the White House just last week.
The US President suggested he could station more American troops in Poland “if they want”, as a security guarantee against Russian aggression; something that will have been noticed by the Kremlin.
The drone attack on Poland is a chance for European leaders to convince Trump that Putin was never serious about the peace talks over Ukraine.
European leaders have been going along with the Trump’s push for ceasefire negotiations but do not believe Putin is serious about them.
They hope Trump will eventually realise that Putin is simply tapping him along, turn on him, impose sanctions and back Kyiv with all the might of the US.
Since Trump met Putin in Alaska in August, Russia has significantly increased its aggression in Ukraine.
At the start of the week Russia launched its biggest aerial bombardment of Ukraine in the war so far, firing 810 drones and 13 missiles.
The US President is showing signs of growing impatience with Putin and has stepped up his threats of sanctions on the Kremlin.
European capitals will hope the drone attack will prove to be the final straw for the mercurial president.
But Trump’s first reaction to the news raised more questions than it answered, with him writing: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!”
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