With the drones over Poland, Putin clearly tested NATO's readiness to support the attacked country. And the result was not bad for the Kremlin. Some in NATO clearly don't understand that new and larger-scale tests could be coming soon.
Sooner or later this was going to happen. The flight of numerous Russian drones over the territory of Poland was undoubtedly a planned provocation by the Kremlin. One drone can lose its orientation and fly "in the wrong direction", but a dozen or more cannot.
Trump makes strange statements, Orban calls for negotiations
The purpose of this action is primarily not military, but political: not only and not so much to check the strength of Poland's air defense system, but to assess in practice the determination of NATO allies to support the Poles. If we proceed from this, the result for the Putin regime is not bad. Donald Trump published a strange post on his social network Truth Social: “What is going on with Russia, which violates Polish airspace with drones? “Here we go again!“.
Viktor Orban wrote on the social network X that he fully supports Poland and considers the violation of its airspace to be “unacceptable“. But the Hungarian prime minister's next words neutralize the first: "This incident proves that our policy of calling for peace in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is reasonable and rational. Life in the shadow of war is full of risks and dangers. It is time to put an end to this! In this regard, we support President Trump's efforts to achieve peace." Orban spoke not of a "provocation" but of an "incident" and not of a "Russian invasion" but of a "Russian-Ukrainian conflict," as if both sides were to blame for the war.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico - another European politician who likes to criticize Ukraine and talk to Putin - remained silent. His Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar supported Poland, but also called for peace talks to end the war.
Three NATO countries supported Poland, but with reservations
This means that three NATO countries, including "number one ally" the United States, supported Warsaw, but with reservations or did not support it at all - just like President Trump. Because it is very strange that the "leader of the free world" in the fourth year of full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine is asking rhetorical questions about Moscow's intentions.
And what exactly, let me ask, is "starting"? This is not support for an ally, but a waste of time, behind which lies a constant unwillingness to call things by their real names: aggression - aggression, its victim - victim, and the aggressor - the aggressor.
Germany, which many have rightly considered and still consider insufficiently prepared to confront Russia both militarily and morally, has spoken out quite unequivocally. Chancellor Friedrich Merz called the Russian drone attack a "reckless action". The German defense and foreign ministers condemned Moscow and supported the destruction of the Russian drones by the Polish air defense.
Who and why does not want to understand Putin?
Of course, we must wait for the results of the consultations with the allies, which Poland requested in accordance with Article Four of the North Atlantic Treaty. But the result of the first days after the provocation, unfortunately, is unambiguous: NATO failed to stand on a united front against Putin, to demonstrate one hundred percent solidarity.
The reason lies in the misunderstanding, or rather, in the conscious unwillingness to understand, that the goals of the Russian dictatorship in this confrontation are not military, but political: to morally destroy the Alliance, to demonstrate its bankruptcy, to prove to the whole world that Article Five of the North Atlantic Treaty is nothing more than an outdated exercise in threatening rhetoric from the Cold War era.
Just as in Ukraine, the goal is not so much to seize new territory as to force the government of Volodymyr Zelensky to capitulate in order to establish a puppet regime of a conditional “Yanukovych number two” in Kiev. Drones have been launched into the airspace of Poland and other countries on NATO's eastern flank before - sent by Russia, as well as from the territory of its ally Belarus. Previous NATO reactions, including from Warsaw and the capitals of the Baltic states, before this attack on Poland were restrained. The mantra was repeated: "Do not give in to provocations and do not escalate!", which is characteristic mainly of Western European allies.
At the heart of this lies the mistaken idea that Putin's Russia is a rational player that can be appeased and reasoned with. This idea, for various reasons, is actually being pushed by Orbán's Hungary, Fico's Slovakia, and, essentially, Trump's America.
There are no signs that NATO wants to understand the essence of Russia's strategy
After the events of the night of September 10, it should be clear to everyone that appeasing and dissuading Russia will not happen. This conclusion has already been reached by both the Poles, who destroyed the Russian drones, and the Baltic states and Finland. These countries are withdrawing from the international convention on anti-personnel mines and will soon begin to mine their borders with Russia and, probably, Belarus.
Will all NATO countries understand or, more importantly, try to understand the essence of Russia's political strategy? For now, this does not seem to be the case. And this means that the Kremlin has already begun planning new and probably larger-scale tests of the military-political unity of the Alliance. And in the not-so-distant future.
This comment expresses the personal opinion of the author and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial office and the DW as a whole.