Drone incursion appeared deliberate

Putin tests NATO with drone assault on Poland

EU foreign policy chief says drone incursion appeared deliberate, and NATO says it is consulting “closely” with Poland.

By Alex Spence and Wojciech Kość

Poland said it scrambled fighter jets and shot down Russian drones in the early hours of Wednesday in what looks like an escalatory move by Russian President Vladimir Putin to test NATO’s defenses.

Poland said the incursion, which forced the closure of Warsaw airport, involved a “dozen or so” drones, some of which it deemed could have posed “a threat.” Dutch F-35 jets joined the Poles in confronting the overnight airspace violation.

There were no casualties, but the wreckage of one crashing drone ripped the top off a house in Wyryki-Wola, in eastern Poland, near both the Ukrainian and Belarusian borders. The Rzeczpospolita daily reported as many as 23 drones crossed into Poland.

Wednesday’s incursion into Poland is a significant escalation from an incident in August when a lone drone crashed 100 kilometers to the southwest of Warsaw, and several European leaders immediately accused Putin of a deliberate attempt to test NATO.

“There is no doubt that this provocation is incomparably more dangerous from Poland’s point of view than any previous ones,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said. “This situation brings us all closer to open conflict, closer than at any time since the Second World War. We have a full-scale war on our Ukrainian-Russian border, but we already face something that goes beyond ordinary provocations in our skies.”

Tusk also noted his government had formally requested to invoke NATO’s Article 4 to convene the military alliance’s members for urgent talks, when a member fears its security is at risk.

The provocation from the Kremlin comes at an especially sensitive time diplomatically, just as U.S. President Donald Trump is weighing whether there is any genuine prospect of a peace deal with Putin, who is sticking to his war aims in Ukraine and upping his murderous air raids there.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte condemned Moscow, warning Russian leader Vladimir Putin that the transatlantic military alliance was “ready” for further incursions.

While Rutte said “a full assessment of the incident” was still ongoing to determine whether the attack was intentional, “what is clear is that a violation last night is not an isolated incident.”

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said it was “the most serious European airspace violation by Russia since the war began, and indications suggest it was intentional, not accidental.”

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever said it was “clear that Putin is not interested in peace, is not interested in a ceasefire. He is provoking us, he is mocking us, and the only reaction can be that we support Ukraine even more and to try to cripple Russian economy as hard as possible.”

Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, agreed Russia was testing Western defenses with a “completely conscious strategy.” Indeed, Tusk noted in parliament that “for the first time” at least some of drones entered Polish airspace directly from Belarus, rather than simply straying over from attacks on Ukraine.

The Belarusians — closely allied to Russia — said the drones had veered off course because of radar jamming by both sides and that they had notified the Poles of the danger.

Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said “Polish and allied radar systems tracked a dozen or so objects that violated our airspace” and noted that objects that could potentially “pose a threat” were shot down.

Shortly before 7.30 a.m., a spokesman for Poland’s air traffic control agency Pansa told the TVN24 network that airports in Warsaw, Modlin, and Rzeszów were about to resume normal operations. Lublin airport — in eastern Poland, near Ukraine — remains closed.

Separately, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued a notice saying that Poland’s main international airport in Warsaw was closed due to “unplanned military activity related to ensuring state security.”

Russian independent Russian military expert Yuri Fyodorov said there was no question of something so consequential not receiving a green light from Putin himself.

“This is yet another provocation by the Russian military leadership and the Kremlin because without the go-ahead from the Kremlin such things do not happen, that is clear (…) this was done with Putin’s approval,” he told The Breakfast Show, a morning news show on YouTube led by independent Russian journalists. 

“This was done to scare Poland and its NATO allies and force them to reduce or stop the transport of military aid to Ukraine through Poland.”