If Vladimir Putin's intention was to use the early morning drone attack in Poland to test NATO air defenses, the Russian president would have been very pleased with the result. And, experts warn, he will likely be encouraged to go further next time, the "Financial Times" points out, quoted by BTA.
The violation of Polish airspace prompted NATO fighter jets to scramble and shoot down some of the missiles - the first time the US-led military alliance has engaged directly with Russian forces since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It marks a dangerous new chapter in a conflict that has been going on for more than three and a half years.
But officials, defense experts and analysts say it will also show how unprepared Europe is for the massive air strikes Russia has been launching into Ukraine almost nightly, revealing the scale of the investment needed to shore up NATO's eastern flank.
"[Moscow] will have noticed that we still haven't learned from what Ukraine has been fighting for years,“ said Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. forces in Europe. "We are absolutely not prepared for this... and now they are on our doorstep."
Hodges stressed that Europe needs a multi-layered, integrated air defense system that can assess the scale of an incoming attack and direct the appropriate resources, unlike the response on Wednesday morning, when expensive fighter jets like Dutch F-35s were sent to shoot down cheap drones.
"This was clearly not an accident, given the number of drones," Hodges said. "This was a rehearsal. To study and understand how good our early warning systems are, what our reaction times are."
Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto called the drone incursion a "deliberate attack" that had two purposes: to provoke and to test.
"Moscow is deliberately fomenting an escalation that nobody wants," Crosetto said. "It is clear that it has no interest in a ceasefire or peace." An Italian surveillance plane assisted the fighter jets that shot down the Russian drones on Wednesday.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that of the approximately 19 drones that entered Polish airspace, only about four, "which posed a direct threat," were shot down. According to the Polish military, most of the drones were decoys that Russia routinely uses to distract and overwhelm Ukraine's air defenses before subsequent waves of missiles and armed drones.
The EU intends to strengthen the protection of its borders with Russia. The announcement came shortly after Warsaw announced that it had destroyed at least three Russian drones in its airspace on Wednesday - a reaction that has raised fears of an escalation of the war in Ukraine, the European Newsroom reported.
"There is no doubt: Europe's eastern flank protects the whole of Europe," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a major speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday. "From the Baltic to the Black Sea. That is why we must invest in its support through the "Vigilance on the Eastern Flank" initiative (Eastern Flank Watch).
The concept is still in its early stages and no formal plan has been published. Von der Leyen described it as a program to strengthen the defenses of EU countries bordering Russia, with investments in real-time satellite surveillance and a "drone wall".
NATO has acknowledged that its air defenses on its eastern flank are one of its weak points and need urgent investment. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte praised "NATO's very successful response" and promised to defend "every inch of allied territory", the "Financial Times" said.
"We need to invest more... to have what we need for deterrence and defense", Rutte added.
The drone attack, which was part of a massive attack on Ukraine with drones and missiles, follows previous incidents in which Russian missiles passed or briefly entered NATO territory but were not shot down.
A Polish arms industry representative told the "Financial Times" that most of the drones identified were "Gerbera" drones - based on the design of Iran's "Shahed" drones, which are not equipped with a warhead and are used as decoys before missile attacks on Ukraine.
Polish authorities suspect that the next wave of armed "Shahed" drones were aimed at the western Ukrainian city of Lviv and that the "Gerbera" decoys were deliberately aimed at Poland to bypass Ukrainian air defenses around Lviv. "One drone, as we have seen so far, could be a mistake", the arms industry representative said. But "19 drones are not a mistake".
Tusk told parliament that several of the drones had taken off from Belarus, a Russian ally that is hosting large-scale military exercises that began on Friday along the borders with Poland and Lithuania.
Germany "immediately raised its alert level" and provided data from its two Patriot air defense systems, located near the eastern Polish city of Rzeszow, about 100 km from the Ukrainian border, according to the defense ministry.
“This teaches us that... we are under constant threat of provocations from the Russian armed forces,“ German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told parliament on Wednesday.
The German Army's Inspector General, Gen. Carsten Breuer, reaffirmed Germany's determination to defend its NATO allies on the alliance's eastern flank. He made the assurances during a visit to a major military exercise in Lithuania, DPA reported.
Breuer stressed that the ongoing German-led "Quadriga 2025" exercises in the Baltics include realistic scenarios for logistical support for troops in a potential conflict. This is the first time such maneuvers have been held on such a large scale.
Poland and its Baltic neighbors are already on high alert for the Russian-Belarusian military exercises "Zapad-2025", which are taking place this week. The exercise, which takes place every four years, simulates a joint response to an attack by a NATO member. On Tuesday, Tusk ordered the complete closure of Poland's border with Belarus ahead of the "very aggressive" exercises "Zapad-2025", noted "Financial Times".
Previous versions simulated a possible nuclear strike against Warsaw, and the latest version, in the fall of 2021, was part of a buildup of Russian troops and weapons on the country's western border, which was ultimately used to invade Ukraine a few months later.
Analysts say this year's "Zapad" will seek to achieve three things: test NATO's responses to provocations such as the drone incursion, demonstrate that despite its military setbacks in Ukraine, it still has a formidable military force, and maintain a state of alert in NATO countries bordering Russia and Belarus.
In recent days, Russian officials have stepped up their rhetoric against NATO neighbors, accusing them of military offensives and paving the way for Moscow to justify its own retaliatory actions.
In an article for TASS this week, Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president and deputy chairman of the country's Security Council, accused NATO member Finland of "pursuing a confrontational course of preparing for war with Russia."
On Sunday, Nikolai Patrushev, a former FSB director and one of Putin's closest aides, accused Western countries of "having decided to seriously raise the stakes, turning The Baltic Sea in an arena for silent hybrid warfare, in an article for the newspaper Kommersant.
On Wednesday, Tusk said that while the current situation did not constitute a "state of war", it was "significantly more dangerous than any previous one".
A Polish arms industry representative said the attack was intended to "create a division in NATO between those who say "we must respond and help Poland" and those who say "calm down, they are just testing us, nothing special".
Former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis compared the drone incursion to Russian sabotage attempts on European territory over the past 18 months.
"They are trying to create a new reality, in a similar way to "They did with the hybrid attacks, where we basically accepted that the Russians were active in NATO countries and doing malicious things," Landsbergis told the Financial Times.
"Now imagine the same thing with drones. They do it once, we don't react... and then there's another attack, maybe not in Poland, maybe in Romania, maybe in Lithuania.“