Moscow drones: Europe is looking for answers and Trump reacts cryptically

Poland and its allies are looking for a political and military answer to the massive penetration of Russian drones in NATO. In Warsaw, the new President Karol Nawrocki convened the Polish Council for National Security for today. It also includes the Prime Minister, the Minister for the Interior and the outside, the security services and the parliamentary management.

The escalation between Russia and NATO triggered great concerns in the European capitals. For the first time in Moscow more than three and a half years of the war of attack against Ukraine, not only individual Russian drones came into the airspace of Poland on Wednesday night and thus NATO. According to Prime Minister Donald Tusk, there were at least 19 flight objects.

For the first time, the Polish Air Force and NATO forces in Poland shot these drones. According to the Polish Ministry of the Interior, the debris of 16 drones were found by Wednesday evening – widely distributed across the country and a few hundreds of kilometers from the eastern border.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) and other politicians assume that the penetration of the drones was not an oversight, but a targeted action by the Moscow leadership. He shares Tusk’s assessment “that the Russian government’s claim that this was a coincidence or an oversight, so to speak, is not credible,” said Merz in Berlin. In the incident, he sees “a very serious end to peace in all of Europe”.

Merz spoke of a “new quality of attacks that we see from Russia”. The NATO air defense worked, but not as good as it should have worked. “This will trigger discussions in NATO. Of course, this will also trigger discussions in the European Union.”

Merz did not say which consequences should be drawn from this. However, he emphasized: “We are and will remain ready to defend, and we are and remain determined to significantly increase the willingness to defend and the defense capacity of the European part of NATO significantly.”

The government in Warsaw called up the allies in NATO according to Article 4 of the NATO statute. Poland tried to mobilize support in many phone calls and conference circuits.

Tusk said he spoke to Merz, France President Emmanuel Macron, the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and NATO General Secretary Mark Rutte. Poland received specific offers of air defense from the allies, he said. But he did not give details.

The Polish Defense Minister Vladysław Kosiniak-Kamysz thanked Sweden, who immediately promised to send aircraft and material for the air defense. The Netherlands also agreed.

Head of State Nawrocki telephoned with US President Donald Trump, as he wrote on Portal X. This is part of the consultations with the allies. “Today’s talks have confirmed the unity of the alliance partners.”

In the Polish government, the right -wing conservative new President Nawrocki maintains a particularly tight connection to Trump. This reacted to the significant escalation in the Ukraine War with a cryptic post on his social network Truth Social: “What’s going on with Russia that drones injured Polish airspace?

In addition to Tusk, Macron, Strander and Meloni, the Ukrainian President Wolodymyr Selenskyj also took part in a switching conference. “Ukraine suggests that the airspace coordinated, well thought out and to defend together,” said Selenskyj afterwards. “The details are clear: How can you prevent an expansion of the war, and how can you stop the escalation steps in Russia? The common forces are completely sufficient.”

Since the beginning of the war in 2022, Kiev has repeatedly asked for the western partners to enforce a ban on flight for Russian weapons above Ukraine. The NATO allies did not get involved with a direct military confrontation with Moscow. The proposal is less that the allies should only shoot off Russian drones and rockets over western Ukraine.

On Wednesday evening, the Ukrainian Air Force again ravages of Russian drones in the sky. However, there was a less strong air raid than the night before.

The Polish Foreign Ministry ordered a Russian diplomat from the Embassy in Warsaw to hand over a protest note. The Russian Ministry of Defense in Moscow did not immediately admit the violation of the Polish airspace, but explained that it was not an attack on Poland. One is ready to discuss the topic with the Polish side. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Poland to construct myths to escalate in the Ukraine conflict.

According to Polish information, many of the Russian drones that had entered not came from the attacked Ukraine, but from the Belarus allied with Moscow. The large-scale Russian-Belarussian military maneuver Sapad 2025 will take place in Belarus from Friday.