Poland woke yesterday morning to what its prime minister, Donald Tusk, called an “unprecedented violation of Polish airspace.” In the early hours, a “huge” swarm of Russian drones – at least 19 by Warsaw’s count, perhaps 23 according to Polish media – crossed the frontier during overnight strikes on Ukraine. Polish and Nato fighters scrambled, including Dutch F-35s, to bring them down. Airports were closed as air-raid sirens wailed. In one village, falling debris from an intercepted drone crashed into a residential block.
For Vladimir Putin, Ukraine is not the goal but the stepping stone
This was not business as usual. Drones have strayed into Poland’s skies before, but this was the first time Polish and Nato forces together have shot down multiple aircraft. It is, as Tusk warned, the closest Poland has been to war since 1939.
The timing is no accident. Only days earlier, Russian missiles struck buildings in Kyiv linked to Britain and the EU. It is all part of a campaign designed to test the ability of Nato to respond to Russian aggression – and to respond in a way that doesn’t destroy the alliance in the process.
For Vladimir Putin, Ukraine is not the goal but the stepping stone. The true prize is the destruction of Nato, and with it the collapse of the American-led order that has underpinned Europe since 1945. Moscow has concluded that if the alliance can be fractured on its eastern flank, Washington’s authority across the West will unravel in turn. This is the essence of Russia’s Great Test: a campaign of probes and provocations designed to prove that Nato’s vaunted guarantee of collective defence is a hollow promise.
With Nato broken, Putin would be granted the freedom he craves, and a return to the pre-1914 world of great-power politics, when Russia could bargain, bully and expand without the inconvenience of collective security. That is why each act matters, whether it is drones over Poland or missiles into Western offices in Kyiv. Russia cannot defeat Nato’s armies in a conventional fight. But it can grind away at confidence, exploit divisions, and bleed the alliance into failure.
Russia does not act alone. China also wants to undermine U.S. global influence, and is investing heavily in developing a parallel world order through institutions like the BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. The huge recent Victory Day parade in Beijing was designed to show the world (and its domestic audience) that U.S. military power, for so long the guarantor of the Western-led order, is now matched.
Russia dresses its aggression in the language of self-defence. To hear the Kremlin tell it, Nato is forever plotting to carve up Russian territory. The alliance, whose founding treaty commits members to collective defence rather than conquest, has never threatened an offensive war against Moscow. But for Putin, the myth is indispensable. It sustains repression at home and dresses imperial ambition as patriotic necessity.
The script is depressingly familiar. Before rolling tanks into Ukraine, Moscow ranted about “Nazis” in Kyiv and Western plots. Now, the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev warns that Finland – freshly ensconced in Nato – is preparing to attack Russia. It is a surreal inversion, but a useful one: a ready-made pretext should the Kremlin ever decide to test Nato’s newest member.
In this propaganda war, truth is irrelevant. What matters is narrative. By portraying itself as the besieged victim, Russia clears the ground for its own aggression.
Faced with this campaign, Nato’s options are uncomfortably narrow. Sanctions are the default response, but Russia’s economy – buoyed by oil, gas and Chinese and Indian trade – still bankrolls the war. Alliance air patrols are already under way over Poland and the Baltics, but they are ruinously expensive compared to the Russian drones they swat down. Europe, which has promised to rearm sometime in the next five or ten years, has precious little in the way of missile defence or stockpiles to spare. Putin understands this. The British government, for all its lofty talk of “global leadership,” knows that the UK only possesses a token shield against incoming missiles but still won’t find the money to do anything serious about this in the immediate term.
One option open to Nato is the murky realm of deniable retaliation: cyber strikes, sabotage, quiet but violent pressure on Russia’s supply chains. It is the one language Moscow understands. But it is not one that a consensus-driven alliance handles easily.
An alternative would be to go hard and invoke Article V, the alliance’s collective-defence clause. This declares that an armed attack against one member is considered an attack against all, and obliges every ally to assist with whatever measures are deemed necessary, including military force. In theory, Poland would be showing the alliance’s strength by invoking this. But it could easily backfire if individual countries refused to come to Poland’s aid, such as Russia-friendly Hungary or Slovakia. Nato would be shown to be a disjointed paper tiger, and its future would be placed in serious doubt.
The real danger though is America. Nato could survive without Hungary, but not without the United States. And the signs are ominous. Whereas European leaders have been quick to support Poland and castigate Russia following the drone strikes, Washington has been noticeably slow. It took more than twelve hours for the first official statement, from the US ambassador to Nato, which confirmed that the U.S. stood by both Poland and Nato. But President Trump has so far been silent.
Faced with this campaign, Nato’s options are uncomfortably narrow
For three quarters of a century, Nato’s deterrent has rested on the assumption that America would defend Europe as if it were defending itself. Now it wobbles, with both the president and vice president Vance repeatedly placing doubt on America’s desire to come to Europe’s aid. Although Trump appeared to partly row back on these comments at the Nato summit in June this year – “We’re with [Europe] all the way” – Moscow’s hope is that when push comes to shove, Washington will not defend its allies. This is what the Great Test intends to find out.
This week’s drone strike on Poland is a severe escalation of Russia’s ambitions. Drones buzzing over villages and missiles into Western buildings in Kyiv are not irritants but deliberate stress-tests. Putin’s purpose is clear: to show that Nato is brittle, America unreliable, and the post-war order hollow. Europe, meanwhile, still speaks of raising defence budgets to the required 5 per cent at some point over the coming decade. The Great Test is here now. Pass it, and the alliance endures. Fail, and the West dissolves.
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