The Kremlin issued a sharp warning to Nato when it said the alliance was “fighting against Russia” and was “de facto involved” in the war in Ukraine.
“Nato is providing direct and indirect support to the Kyiv regime,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “It can be said with absolute certainty that Nato is fighting against Russia.”
Yet as Russia sends drones into Poland and Romania and organises drills with Belarus, experts say that Putin is testing Nato’s response through its more aggressive movements past Ukrainian borders.
“There is obviously a lot of discussion whether these incursions, especially when it comes to Poland, were deliberate or it was more of a system malfunction, but I do believe that it was a deliberate one,” says Natia Seskuria, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
“I think Putin is basically testing a Western response by trying to violate Polish airspace, which is a major Nato ally, and he’s trying to find out basically whether there is such thing as Nato unity when it comes to responding to these acts of aggression.”
As the war in Ukraine intensifies, The Independent looks at the ways Russia is expanding the conflict to involve more countries around the world.
Drone skirmishes in Poland and Romania
Russia has faced global outrage as drone incursions in Nato airspace become more frequent. Moscow drew criticism from the West after the Polish military shot down a large number of Russian drones that had entered its airspace, a move which prompted prime minister Donald Tusk to warn that the country is the closest to armed conflict since the Second World War.
There were 19 intrusions into Polish airspace last Tuesday, with many drones entering from Belarus, Mr Tusk said in parliament, adding that three drones were confirmed to have been shot down, with the fourth being likely.
While Russia has said it didn’t target Poland, and Moscow’s ally Belarus said that the drones went astray because they were jammed, European leaders have said they are certain that the incursions were a deliberate provocation by Putin.
There have been many instances of Russia violating EU and Nato airspace, but this incursion was particularly serious, according to Ms Seskuria.
“It shows basically that Putin is not really interested in any kind of peaceful resolution of the conflict. On the contrary, he’s signalling to the West that unless he gets the best deal in these peace negotiations, which I don’t think he believes he can at the moment, he is willing to go even further ahead and extend the war, which may not be confined to Ukrainian borders.”
On Saturday, Romania scrambled fighter jets after a Russian drone entered its airspace. The country’s defence minister, Ionut Mosteanu, said that F-16 pilots came close to taking down the drone as it was flying very low before it left national airspace toward Ukraine.
Belarusian drills
Russia and Belarus have launched a long-planned joint military exercise, Zapad 2025, which began on Friday and will run until Tuesday this week. The intention is to showcase the close defence ties between Moscow and Minsk.
Defence officials in Belarus originally set aside 13,000 troops to participate in the exercise, which was meant to take place along its western border, although by May the ministry cut the number in half and said the main manoeuvres would take place deeper inside the country.
Although Moscow and Minsk have said the exercises are exclusively defensive and that they do not intend to attack any Nato member, they have drawn worries from Kyiv and Western allies in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, which border Belarus.
Ms Seskuria said Russia’s training exercises with Belarus were deliberate.
“These exercises in the past have been used for Russia to escalate the real conflict. In 2008, for example, against Georgia and then against Ukraine, Russia has used these drills as a preparation for the actual war,” they said.
Russia’s hybrid attacks
Russia has also targeted European countries through other methods, which have been described as “hybrid warfare”. These range from cyberattacks to sabotage operations and disinformation campaigns.
“This happens all the time,” says Ms Seskuria. “It has much deeper implications on European security, and there are various instances where Russia is directly intervening in elections. We saw this happening in Moldova last year, and this year ahead of their parliamentary elections.”
Russia has been accused of meddling in the elections of European nations for years.
The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre judged in 2022 that Russia had been behind a cyberattack with Europe-wide impact just an hour before its invasion of Ukraine. While Ukraine’s military was the primary target of an attack on high-speed broadband service Viasat, wind farms in central Europe and both personal and commercial internet users were also affected.
Disinformation campaigns in Western countries have also been linked to Russia.
“There are consistent efforts to push these narratives that are pro-Russian, portraying the West as an aggressor rather than a Kremlin that wants to violate Ukraine’s sovereignty and fights this war for its own imperial ambitions,” Ms Seskuria said.
