Russia’s overnight decision to send almost 20 Shahed-type drones into Polish airspace marks the most serious direct challenge to NATO since the invasion of Ukraine began. It was not an accident, nor a malfunction. It was a deliberate probe aimed at exposing cracks in Western unity – and at testing just how far the United States is prepared to stand behind its allies.
What is not known at this stage is whether the drones were armed. That uncertainty rules out an armed NATO retaliation.
Instead, it hands Vladimir Putin the possibility of a win-win scenario.
Either Europe pours money into upgrading its defences – an expense he knows will fuel unrest during a cost of living crisis – or it collapses into heated arguments over how to respond, exposing the divisions he has sought to exploit all along.
The drones, launched from Russian positions near Belarus, coincided with a wider strike against Ukrainian cities.
Four were downed by NATO aircraft, including Dutch F-35s, while several others penetrated deeper into Poland before being intercepted. Warsaw immediately invoked Article 4 of the NATO treaty, calling for urgent consultations among allies.
The symbolism is stark.
Previous spill-overs into NATO territory – fragments of missiles or debris from Ukrainian interceptions – could be passed off as collateral.
This was different. The drones were launched on a straight trajectory across the border, a move difficult to dismiss as chance.
As one senior Western analyst, Justin Crump of the Sibylline strategic risk group, put it: “This is not an accident. It’s not deniable that they did it – but they’ll deny it anyway. They’ve been continually probing for weak spots.”
Behind this sits the central Russian calculation that NATO’s unity is brittle.
Moscow does not expect to defeat the alliance in battle. It wants to fracture it politically, signalling that the cost of constant readiness is unsustainable for wavering governments in Berlin, Paris or London – and that Washington will eventually walk away.
In this, Putin may have gleaned some satisfaction from President Trump’s decision earlier this month to scale back much of America’s military presence in Eastern Europe.
The move, ostensibly intended to force European countries to pay more for defence in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, certainly heralded warnings that it would give the wrong signal to Moscow. But Russia has been preparing for this moment since its full-scale invasion in 2022.
The timing is also telling.
Even as NATO ministers and European leaders convened yet another round of “coalition of the willing” meetings on reinforcing Ukraine and the eastern flank, Russia forced the issue with a live test of alliance solidarity.
What had been discussed in conference halls from Brussels to Warsaw is now being played out in real time on NATO’s borders.
The risk for Putin remains yet another miscalculation, in a litany that already includes underestimating Ukraine’s determination to resist, misjudging the West’s willingness to tolerate strikes inside Russia’s heartland, and misreading Europe’s resolve to offset the vagaries of an unpredictable US president.
If even one drone had struck a civilian target in Poland, the pressure for an Article 5 response – collective defence – would have been immense.
That prospect remains in the background.
As Crump warns: “Russia is gambling that there won’t be an Article 5. Their best result is NATO divided, so they can operate in their sphere of influence and bully nations at will.”
Certainly, Eastern states are “running out of patience,” one Baltic diplomat said last night.
Any gamble on US disinterest ahead of the midterms may backfire, with Trump needing to balance sops to his base against accusations of Biden-like weakness in the face of adversity.
For now, NATO’s response is being carefully calibrated.
Reinforcements are likely for Poland’s air defences, along with intensified aerial patrols. But the incident also underscores the strategic gap in Western planning: how to respond to “grey zone” operations – deliberate provocations that sit below the threshold of war. Russia has spent years refining this toolkit. NATO still struggles to find proportional counters.
The coming days will show whether the alliance treats this as a turning point or another round in the long, grinding war of nerves. What is certain is that Moscow has raised the stakes. The Polish incursion shows the question is no longer whether Russia will test NATO’s resolve – but how often, and how far, before the alliance is forced to prove it.