The main targets of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Poland were not necessarily civilian homes attacked in the eastern town of Wairiki, or to close airspace around the busiest airport in Warsaw, the capital. The Kremlin head appears to have been aiming for NATO’s confidence and unity in a partial blow that appears to be directed at President Donald Trump.
The number of drones crossed into Poland – 19 “violations” reported by Prime Minister Donald Tass, making it difficult to place an incident on or interfere with it, causing navigation errors. The shrapnel is still sifted, but most Shahed-type drones were pre-programmed to hit targets before launches, and could have avoided dangerous areas of the Poland-Crayne border if Moscow didn’t want the risk of invading NATO members’ territory. The Russians have largely done so over the past three years, as they invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday it had not targeted Polish sites and wanted dialogue on the incident. However, the scale of the invasion makes these excuses difficult to digest. Recent history is littered with the “gray zone” behaviors of Moscow. In Moscow, the envelope of its escalation action will expand.
Instead, the early Wednesday morning scene was unprecedented. Poland’s airspace has been closed. The NATO jets scrambled. A private home damaged by debris. The Russian goal may be to sow mixed chaos with one of the more Hawkish members of NATO and Eastern Europe, but it is also to elicit and evaluate responses from the military sphere that prevented most of the Ukrainian war from directly clashing.
What will NATO do now? This is a question that President Putin is currently enforcing the alliance.
And the answer is what the alliance must give at an unprecedented stage in its history. Trump has eroded the foundations of security guarantees that Europe has relied on for decades. It led to an increase in America’s key goal: the European defence spending pledge. But it also undermines the fundamental doctrine of transatlantic security. Attacking NATO members in Europe guarantees American military response. Still, the condition of this statement is where Putin flew more than 12 drones last night.
The delicate balance of the European NATO countries is to find a response that ensures that Putin feels uncomfortable enough to not make these invasions into a weekly event. But even so aggressive, they invite Moscow to escalate further, giving the false narrative that when Russia invaded Ukraine it was at odds with everything about NATO.
And Europe faces arguably more important hurdles in terms of the role of the White House in this response. How do they persuade Trump to get himself involved in a tough rift and not undermine the “good relationship” that appears to be eager to hold on the Kremlin’s head despite the growing frustration of the US president?
The changes in the NATO alliance under Trump are already evident. In November 2022, then-US President Joe Biden was traveling to Indonesia when he was spoken about the crisis when early reports accused Russian missiles of losing to Poland and killing two Polish farmers.
The attack was later attributed to a false Ukrainian missile, but Biden still convened an emergency G7 meeting in Bali to discuss the incident.
So far, Trump has failed to provide security guarantees for the Iron Family, which has been at the heart of the NATO Alliance for decades. His true social post: “What about Russia violating Polish airspace with drones? We’re going here!” It’s quite shortfall, and seems oddly exhilarating by the prospect of uncertainty going forward. Trump is ready to move on to the next wave of sanctions against Moscow over the weekend, and he spoke “quickly” with his Russian counterparts, saying that European leaders will visit him in Washington, D.C. on Monday or Tuesday. None of the above happened.
Trump’s acolite could be attributed to this to his destructive style, or agility, but does not project strength to the Kremlin. Summary: From Saturday night, Russian drones or missiles have hit Kiev’s major Ukrainian government buildings, handing out Donetsk’s pensions to kill 25 people in one strike in a post office van, and now the NATO Jets have launched the most important air invasion in history, where they have scrambled and shot down Russian doctors.
Trump envoy to Ukraine Keith Kellogg called Sunday’s strike against Kiev “escalation.” It will be interesting to see how he describes the past 48 hours and see whether Trump reflects or absorbs those feelings.
Russia, amid these escalations, suddenly revived the waste of the frontlines in the war chosen by tens of thousands of combat old men. Although it remains strategically weaker than when the war began, there are two important differences.
Since this month’s Tianjin Summit and the surprising scene of Bonomie between China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi, Putin may feel that he can flirt and escalate just like he has last few days, with the substantial economic and geopolitical support behind him. It informs him of the time he thinks he can continue fighting.
Secondly, President Putin is currently engaged in a war that began as a few weeks of bid to overwhelm his weak neighbors, but it has now been transformed into a battle for his worldview, perhaps his administration, and perhaps his own survival.
The West often tends to overestimate the threat posed by Russia, but also underestimate Putin’s commitment to his war. Whether they can match his application with escalations is a matter of the upcoming day.
This story has been updated.
