Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk led an emergency meeting in Warsaw after Russian drones violated Polish airspace. Nato air defences helped counter drones. Photo / Handout, via AFP
There are at least five lessons that Europe and the United States should take away from Russia’s unprecedented decision to fire drones into Poland as part of another massive volley against Ukraine.
All require either an immediate response or recalculation.
1) For Putin, Nato expansion is a root cause of the war in Ukraine
Nobody should in future be able to dismiss as ridiculous the idea that Russia - struggling so mightily in Ukraine - would ever take on a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member.
It just did, regardless of the Russian Defence Ministry’s claim today to have had no intent of striking any targets in Poland.
Nineteen drones entered Polish airspace, according to Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, enough to make it clear this was a deliberate action and for Poland to invoke Nato’s Article 4, calling on allies to consult when a member is under threat.
According to Fabian Hinz, of London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, analysis of those downed drones available so far indicates they were of Gerberas, a cheap fixed wing model designed for the Russian military in China.
These have multiple roles including as attack drones and as decoys to overwhelm Ukraine’s defences.
What matters more than the configuration of the UAVs deployed is that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been crystal clear since the start of the war that he sees the expansion of the Western alliance to admit former Soviet bloc countries as part of the “root cause” behind his decision to invade a neighbouring state.
Unless Nato complies, he will continue pressing, not because he fears invasion from the West, but because the alliance limits the sphere of influence that he is determined to rebuild for Moscow.
2) Losing Ukraine to Russia would be disastrous for western Europe
The attack underscores the obvious fact that Ukraine is Europe’s first and best line of defence against a vengeful, revisionist Russia.
Entertain for a moment the idea that Putin is ultimately allowed to achieve his goals in Ukraine.
Over-running - or indeed being gifted - all territories from Odesa in the south to Sumy in the northeast, while forcing a change of regime in Kyiv that puts a Moscow-friendly government in charge of what remains of the country beyond the Dnipro River.
The case of Belarus shows clearly that Putin does not need to occupy a country in order to position his missiles, troops, and air defences there, nor to direct its policies toward neighbours he considers unco-operative.
Drone incursions, fired from a much shorter distance - and so with less time for Nato defences to react - would be just one in a long list of available tools available to him for further destabilisation efforts.
3) Nato’s weaponry is behind the times, which leaves the alliance vulnerable
As Phillips O’Brien, an airpower specialist and professor of strategic studies at St Andrews University, Scotland, put it in a Substack post today, Nato’s reliance on a range of expensive aircraft and missiles to down only some of the Russian drones that crossed into Polish airspace shows just how unprepared the alliance’s defences remain after four years of war next door.
“God help them if they are faced with 600 UAVs and missiles on a single night,” as is routinely the case for Ukraine, he wrote.
Now ask whether - having retooled Russia’s economy for war and found the limits of Europe’s will and capacity to resist - the Putin who was willing to invade a nation the size of France with a force a fraction of the size he currently deploys in Ukraine, would pass on the opportunity to use those tools.
4) Countries can be attacked, and Nato tested, without an invasion
This war has shown that Putin does not need to invade a country to attack it.
This can be done through cyberattacks and sabotage, or with missiles and drones fired in quantities that would have seemed implausible just a few years ago.
Russia doesn’t have to be next to a country to target it, even if that greatly increases available options.
Indeed, Russia also doesn’t need to invade in order to test Nato and the steadfastness of the Article V collective defence clause that gives it substance.
That testing’s begun with what O’Brien called Moscow’s “training wheel” attack on Poland.
How the US reacts now - whether with an absolute and clearly signalled commitment to Poland’s defence, or with anything short of that - will be critical.
It will decide whether Putin pulls back - having got his answer - or probes further to find more weaknesses that expose and so destroy an alliance that has proved a paper tiger, changing geopolitical calculations across Europe.
With no meaningful US security commitment, Putin would be well on the way to succeeding where his predecessors in the Kremlin, all the way back to Joseph Stalin failed: decoupling Washington from Europe and making Russia the dominant military power on the European continent.
5) Russia is increasing pressure, not Nato
Finally, Russia’s drone attack on one of Nato’s best-armed member states shows the corrosive effect of Europe’s military incapacity and a US lack of political will.
The combination has allowed Russia to seize the initiative in Ukraine this year.
It should have been US President Donald Trump and Kyiv’s other allies in Europe and Asia who dialled up economic and military pressure on Russia, cajoling the Kremlin into negotiations that produce a sustainable end to the war.
Instead, it is Putin, secure in his own alliances with China, Iran and North Korea, who is increasing pressure on Ukraine and its backers.
His hope is that Kyiv’s allies will either abandon Ukraine or persuade it to capitulate to Putin’s war aims and the transformed balance of power in Europe that would result.
Conclusion
This was just a warning shot.
None of these extreme outcomes are necessary because of two factors.
Kyiv deploys an armed force - and at this point also a manufacturing capacity for drones and other critical weapons - that no European nation to its west can hope to match for the near-to-medium term future.
And Europe - when backed by the US - still has more than enough resources to help that force stop Putin within Ukraine. The drone is now squarely in Nato’s court.
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