How Russia’s drone incursion into Poland skirted the line of NATO’s escalation policy
Polish Air Force Mikoyan MiG-29 fighter jets take part in a NATO shielding exercise at the Łask Air Base in Łask, Poland, on Oct. 12, 2022. (Omar Marques / Getty Images)
Russia and NATO are currently in the most open confrontation since the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the Cold War — but only one side seems to be acknowledging it.
The incursion of 21 Russian drones into Polish airspace on Sept. 9 — unprecedented in the history of Moscow’s relations with NATO — has brought the prospects of a direct military exchange between the two adversaries into the forefront.
“Even though NATO is not at war, Russian aggression strikes beyond Ukraine,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Sept. 10, the day after the incident.
Although Sikorski quickly confirmed Warsaw’s assessment that Russia’s incursion was intentional — a statement soon repeated by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk — NATO itself, as well as Washington, have so far avoided doing the same.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin, which denied an intent to attack Poland, said the latest developments were just another episode of Russia’s larger open struggle against the West, of which the war against Ukraine is just a part.
“NATO is at war with Russia,” Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Sept. 15 in response to Sikorski’s comments.
"This is obvious and does not need any further proof.”
The incident has put NATO’s unity and readiness to respond robustly to Russian attacks under the spotlight, in a context inseparable from Moscow’s ongoing war against Ukraine.
For NATO, the drone incursion marks an urgent and timely test of the alliance’s capacity to defend against new aerial threats on its eastern flank, and of the degree of unity with which the alliance is ready and willing to stand up to Russian provocations.
But for Ukraine, the limit of NATO’s reaction to strengthening its own defense rather than direct punitive action on Moscow has been a bitter pill to swallow.
"I do not believe that NATO has failed," President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sept. 13, adding: "But when there are such signals… we must respond."
What has and hasn’t been done?
For an alliance that has been talking for years about the need to increase its preparedness for a potential war in Europe, NATO’s response against the threat of a small handful of drones flying across its border demonstrated how unprepared it really was.
“The main lesson to learn, in my opinion, from the incursion to Poland is that NATO has not been ready to counter the threat of cheap drones,” Andras Racz, senior fellow at the German Council for Foreign Relations, told the Kyiv Independent.
Within 24 hours of the attack, Warsaw announced it was invoking NATO’s Article 4, which calls for member states to “consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.”
But Article 5 — the alliance's collective self-defense clause — remained off the table.
Soon after, militaries across Europe quickly scrambled to understand and acquire anti-drone interceptor drone technology of the type successfully used in Ukraine, as reported by the Kyiv Independent.
Beyond that, the response of NATO itself has been limited to the strengthening of the alliance’s own defense against such incidents, without any hard consequences for Russia or new support for Ukraine.
Speaking at a joint press conference with the supreme allied commander in Europe on Sept. 12, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte announced the “Eastern Sentry” initiative, bringing in extra NATO air assets including French and British fighters, as well as Czech helicopters to patrol the eastern flank.
Ultimately, much of what NATO is able to do as an alliance depends on whether or not the United States, as de-facto leader and center of gravity of the alliance, buys in.
Even just a strong condemnation from Washington could have meant a lot for the unity of NATO’s response as a whole, but instead, U.S. President Donald Trump disputed the intentionality of the incursion, saying it could have been a “mistake,” and added that he wasn’t “gonna defend anybody.”
“I think we would have probably heard a much stronger condemnation coming out of a different U.S. administration than the present one,” said Lucian Kim, Ukraine analyst at International Crisis Group.
“The lack of a strong American condemnation was certainly noticed in the Kremlin.”
Managing expectations
In the days following the drone incursion, with Warsaw confirming the intentional nature of Russia’s provocation, voices from inside Ukraine called for a response from NATO that properly reflected Moscow’s unprecedented brazenness.
In reality, both the unity of the alliance and the reluctance of any individual member states to escalate with Moscow placed limits on the strength of a response from the outset.
Importantly, Russia’s choice to enter Polish airspace with Gerbera drones — usually used as decoys to distract enemy air defense during mass attacks on Ukraine — suggest a careful calculation of how the provocation would be classified, Racz said.
“The Russians knew all this exactly,” he said, “that's why they used unarmed drones, without any explosive charge and with such flight paths, which minimized the danger of harming civilian lives. They did not fly over big cities.”
“The Russian intention was to keep escalation risks minimal.”
In line with Russia’s relative caution, and the lack of any casualties, NATO members have stopped short of calling the incident an attack, and Poland’s choice to invoke Article 4 rather than Article 5, which demands a hard response from allies, immediately put a limit on what the alliance would do.
“The question is not whether NATO could give a more robust response,” said Racz.
“If there is no consensus, there is no robust response. The question is whether some member states individually could give some kind of a reaction, could impose some costs on Russia.”
But when push comes to shove, as Sikorski later pointed out, these individual member states — even Poland itself, whose security is directly linked to Ukraine’s — are simply not ready for more direct escalation.
“Anyone who wants to fight Russia can start right now,” the minister said at the YES conference in Kyiv on Sept. 13, “but I don't see anyone willing to do so.”
“The ultimate Russian trump card is its nuclear arsenal, and every NATO member is acutely aware that any kind of armed escalation could quickly turn into a conflagration,” Kim said.
“So here we see the very stark border between NATO members and countries that are outside of the alliance.”
Going forward
Watching the response to its drone incursion — reckless as it was careful — Moscow has received more evidence that provocations against NATO countries can occur and be tolerated, separate from its ongoing war of aggression in Ukraine.
“Basically, no costs have been put on them,” said Racz. “They achieved their information objectives, and they achieved their military objectives — to test the readiness of NATO's forces.
“The fact that NATO would deploy more assets to the eastern flank, from Russia's perspective, doesn't matter much, because they know that NATO is not going to attack Russia.”
However, even if neither the alliance nor member states could have matched Moscow’s escalation immediately, the incursion could slowly move NATO countries into stronger action against Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“One question is whether this whole incident accelerates the process of adopting, finally, new U.S. sanctions,” said Racz. “The second question is whether this incident functions as a catalyst for some NATO member countries to intensify military assistance to Ukraine.
“But here I see only question marks so far, I don't have the answers yet.”
On the topic of air defense itself, the incursion looks to have warmed European nations further to the idea of deploying airpower to shoot down Russian drones and missiles over Ukrainian territory, at least in the west of the country.
“By his action, President Putin has possibly brought forward this idea because we manage our space together, and opinion is shifting towards this idea," Sikorski told the Kyiv Independent on Sept. 13.
“The real risk going forward is that there will be probing actions and ambiguous actions without clear goals,” Kim said.
“What happened in Poland is one possible example of a probing move, and if Moscow views it as a success it may lead to new ones.”
Racz said that because the incursion was carried out with unarmed drones, no casualties were suffered, and because Poland itself did not invoke Article 5, the incident does not necessarily undermine whether or not NATO would really be ready to respond to an actual military attack.
“Imagine a scenario when even such an unarmed drone hits a children's home or a power plant or something really bad happens,” said Racz.
“From then on, there is no other way to go than requesting an Article 5.”
Note from the author:
Hi, this is Francis Farrell, cheers for reading this article. I know this piece, and this whole affair, doesn't seem fair for all of us that understand that Ukraine's defense and the defense of NATO countries in Europe is the same struggle. But this is the hand that we have been dealt, this is the nature of dealing with an alliance in which the biggest player often seems to be playing against Ukraine. Whatever the cards may be that Kyiv holds, we will continue to bring you the reality of this war as it is. Please consider supporting our reporting.
