Poland has called an emergency Nato council meeting after shooting down at least eight Russian drones that entered its airspace in the most dangerous test of the alliance’s resolve in decades.
In calling for the council meeting, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, who said he was in “constant contact” with Nato secretary general Mark Rutte, was bringing the alliance together to discuss its Article Five – the obligation to defend a member subject to an armed attack.
The move will further test Donald Trump’s loyalty to the West’s most important strategic alliance. He has spent the last seven months in office backing Russia against America’s allies and himself threatened to invade or annex Nato members Canada and Denmark.
The Russian drones were “an act of aggression that posed a real threat to the safety of our civilians”, the Polish government said.
Many were shot down by Polish aircraft that were scrambled in a portent of what many in Europe fear could be what is to come from Russia.
Vladimir Putin has often said that he wants to return eastern Europe to the era when it was ruled or dominated by the Soviet Union. He has threatened the Baltic states, and Poland, especially.
As a result, Poland is expanding its military at breakneck speed with heavy spending on armour, aircraft, and infantry fighting vehicles.
The incursion into Polish airspace may be an accident.
But it is an accident that Russia clearly feels happy to risk, given the level of impunity for its actions.
Putin was given red-carpet treatment on American soil in Alaska even though the International Criminal Court has issued him an international arrest warrant for crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, said on X (Twitter) that “the longer he [Putin] faces no strength in response, the more aggressive he gets”.
Joe Wilson, a Republican US congressman, said that the penetration of Poland’s airspace, which he called an attack, was an “act of war”.
Trump has refused to supply Ukraine with weapons directly and threatened to cut the flow of intelligence to Kyiv since he took office. He has imposed very little pressure on the Kremlin, though.
Lately, as Putin has resisted his efforts to get a ceasefire process underway in Ukraine, Trump has repeatedly threatened economic sanctions on Russian trading partners. But he has never suggested that America would return to the level of military assistance given by his predecessor, Joe Biden.
“Putin is no longer content just losing in Ukraine while bombing mothers and babies, he is now directly testing our resolve in Nato territory,” Wilson said on X.
Trump will be called upon to join Nato in condemning Russia’s air penetration of Poland and even issuing warnings to back off or face violent consequences.
This will sit uneasily with this US president and his long history of friendships in Moscow, which trump the US alliance that has been the bedrock of the West’s security architecture for decades.
