Date: 19 November 2025 Author: Daryna Sydorenko

Moscow’s Creeping Escalation: Hybrid Pressure on Poland and the Alliance

As many Polish, Ukrainian, and European experts warned, Russia would not stop at Ukraine. Give it an inch, and it will take a mile. Combined with Vladimir Putin’s confrontational style of negotiation and statecraft, that appetite has now spilled onto NATO territory. When a wave of Russian drones crossed into Poland from Belarusian airspace on the night of September 9-10, 2025, the Alliance’s eastern flank entered a new phase of the war.

Photo: A screenshot of a video posted to Telegram by a Russian military drone unit | Stalin’s Falcons/Telegram

For Poland and its allies, this was not merely an extension of Russia’s air campaign against Ukraine. It was a test. By sending drones toward logistical hubs that facilitate Western support for Kyiv, Moscow signaled its willingness to escalate, probing NATO’s deterrence and defense postures along with political unity in the process. The incident triggered Article 4 consultations and forced the alliance to confront a long-anticipated but previously avoided challenge: deliberate Russian kinetic activity inside NATO airspace.

Background

Moscow’s decision to push drones into Polish airspace highlights a deliberate strategy of controlled provocation. Around 24 drones were recorded entering Poland overnight; the Kremlin avoided comment, while Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed the drones had simply strayed during strikes on Ukraine. Polish officials rejected this version, with Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski stressing that the drones were deliberately guided into Polish territory.

The significance of the event lies less in the tactical outcome than in the precedent set. For the first time, NATO forces were compelled to use live fire against Russian assets inside alliance territory, while on the other side of the board, Moscow was testing NATO’s deterrence posture through controlled, ambiguous provocations and avoiding escalation into outright war.

Operational and Political Costs for the Alliance

The September 10 incursion illustrates several vulnerabilities that extend beyond Poland.

First, it demonstrates that Russia can manipulate the cost balance of defense in its favor. Intercepting low-cost drones requires NATO to deploy expensive aircraft and missiles, an asymmetry that cannot be sustained over time. A single Shahed drone, produced at a fraction of the price of an air-to-air missile, can draw out resources worth hundreds of thousands of euros. As one NATO officer reportedly admitted, deploying fifth-generation fighters against drones “does not make long-term military sense.”

This imbalance is aggravated by the Alliance’s limited deployment of scalable defenses against drone saturation tactics. If intrusion is repeated on a larger scale, it would quickly deplete munitions stockpiles and exhaust pilots without significantly altering Moscow’s calculus. By contrast, based on years of experience in fighting the Russians, Ukraine is actively building a layered defense architecture that combines mobile fire groups, interceptor drones, electronic warfare, and fighter aircraft. However, even Kyiv continues to contend with gaps in coverage and resource constraints. The episode once again underlines the urgent need for the EU to invest in research and development of short-range air defense systems tailored specifically for countering drones.

The incident also exposed how disinformation amplifies the impact of military provocations. In Polish social media, narratives quickly circulated suggesting that Ukraine had allowed the drones to pass or even staged a provocation. A Res Futura survey found that 38 percent of users blamed Ukraine, compared to 34 percent who held Russia responsible. Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that a Kremlin-engineered “wave of pro-Russian sentiment and hostility toward Ukraine” was taking root, built on genuine public fears.

In this sense, Russia has identified a pressure point: it can challenge alliance credibility and drain resources without triggering a direct military response. The ongoing process of building a fully integrated air defense architecture on NATO’s Eastern flank, cost imbalance, and information vulnerabilities together suggest that the September 10 incident would not be an isolated act but a rehearsal for a broader campaign of hybrid coercion.

Reaction of World Leaders and Allies

The immediate political responses to the incursion revealed both solidarity and hesitation inside NATO. Poland’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Marcin Bosacki, told the emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on September 12 that nineteen^[1] separate drone violations over seven hours could not be dismissed as accidental. Polish President Karol Nawrocki also confirmed that this was a planned action by the Russian Federation, and all the materials Polish leadership have indicated that this was a deliberate act, which violated Poland’s territorial integrity on an unprecedented scale.

Several European leaders echoed that assessment. Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, stated in the Bundestag that the drones had “obviously been directed on this course” and described the event as a provocation. Britain’s defense secretary John Healey called it a “serious escalation” that forced Warsaw airport to shut down temporarily, while Norway’s foreign minister Espen Barth Eide warned that Moscow was testing NATO directly. The European Union summoned Russian and Belarusian envoys to protest what it called a reckless act endangering European citizens.

The United States reacted more cautiously. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the violations as “unacceptable and dangerous” but left open whether the drones had been intended to strike Polish targets. President Donald Trump refrained from directly attributing responsibility, saying only that “they were shot down and fell” and that Russian drones “should not have been that close to Poland.”.

The divergence is important. As Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk observed, the incursion had brought his country closer to military conflict “than at any time since the Second World War.” Yet allied consensus on how to respond beyond rhetorical condemnation remains fragile. While leaders in Warsaw and the Baltic states favor tougher countermeasures, including the possibility of intercepting Russian drones over Ukrainian airspace, others in Berlin and Washington warn against steps that could escalate toward direct confrontation.

At the same time, NATO demonstrated operational readiness. The North Atlantic Council met under Article 4, allies deployed additional aircraft to the eastern flank, and European states pledged further air defense support to Poland. The Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom promised new assets, while the Czech Republic committed helicopters and troops. These moves signal solidarity but stop short of a strategic shift.

Taken together, the reactions highlight the alliance’s central dilemma. NATO has shown political unity in condemning Russia’s actions and reinforcing its eastern flank. But disagreements over escalation thresholds and differing assessments of U.S. commitment leave space for Moscow to exploit. The Kremlin’s strategy relies on exactly this ambiguity: keeping its provocations below the level that would trigger a decisive allied response, while probing for divisions that could undermine deterrence over time.

Adapting Post-Incursion

The September 10 incident accelerated a broader NATO and EU effort to reinforce the Alliance’s eastern flank against hybrid and low-cost aerial threats.

Well before the incursion, NATO had activated Baltic Sentry, a joint maritime and air-surveillance activity designed to deter sabotage and protect undersea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea from hybrid attacks. Following the Polish airspace violation, NATO launched Eastern Sentry, an operation intended to reinforce the Alliance’s eastern borders, drawing conceptually from Baltic Sentry and aligning with Poland’s evolving efforts of building a “drone wall”. The operation expands allied surveillance, air patrols, and rapid-response capacity across the northeastern corridor, bridging the Baltic and Black Sea theatres.

Poland has moved quickly to operationalize these frameworks and bolster its own capabilities. Following the incursion, President Karol Nawrocki underscored the need to significantly increase investment in air and missile defense systems and strengthen civil resilience and preparedness. He also approved the deployment of NATO forces in Poland as part of the alliance’s response.

Additionally, due to earlier initiatives, the government secured nearly €1 billion from the European Investment Bank for satellite, intelligence, and mobility infrastructure and up to €47 billion in loans through the EU’s new SAFE instrument, intended for air-defense modernization and anti-drone capabilities. Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski announced that Warsaw would become the largest beneficiary of SAFE, and that it would channel a portion of its funds into joint defense projects with Ukraine. Prime Minister Donald Tusk confirmed that these funds would prioritize anti-drone technologies and modernization of air defense, developed in close partnership with Ukrainian industry and operators.

Beyond procurement, Poland is also adopting Ukraine’s operational know-how. Polish anti-drone teams are scheduled to train with Ukrainian specialists at NATO facilities in Poland, a rare case where a non-NATO partner instructs alliance forces. As Sikorski observed, “It is the Ukrainians who will be training us how to stand up to Russia, not the other way around.”

Other Possible Risks

The September 10 incursion raises concerns about the adequacy of the Western response. As Poland moved to intercept Russian drones, the United States eased sanctions on Belarus and allowed its national airline, Belavia, to resume transactions with U.S. suppliers. This move coincided with the start of Zapad-2025, joint Russian–Belarusian exercises involving some 30,000 troops. Such timing has raised questions about whether Washington is pursuing a strategy akin to “reverse Kissinger,” seeking to peel Minsk away from Moscow. Yet Belarus remains deeply dependent on Russian political and economic support, and Lukashenka’s regime survives largely because of it. Without credible leverage, engagement risks being read by Moscow and Minsk as weakness rather than as strategic statecraft.

Furthermore, Belarus itself continues to serve as a staging ground for hybrid threats. Its territory has already hosted Russian troops, facilitated drone incursions, and been used to channel migrants toward Poland’s borders in past campaigns of pressure. The Zapad-2025 exercises echo patterns seen in early 2022, when similar maneuvers preceded the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The possibility that Belarus could again serve as a launchpad for more destabilizing operations cannot be dismissed.

A second concern lies in the possibility that repeated incursions may alter Europe’s calculus on air defense transfers. President Volodymyr Zelenskyi has cautioned that Moscow is deliberately trying to pressure European states to hold back systems for their own protection. He argued that this dynamic risks turning allies into competitors over scarce assets, weakening Ukraine at the very moment when its layered defense is essential. Unless NATO treats air defense as a collective resource, through expanded production and joint deployment, the Kremlin may succeed in straining solidarity by forcing difficult trade-offs between national defense and support to Kyiv.

A third risk is potential erosion of Poland’s role as Ukraine’s most important transit and support hub. Former Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis warned that even the perception of diminished Polish assistance would constitute a political victory for Moscow. Poland remains indispensable for the flow of Western military equipment into Ukraine; any weakening of Warsaw’s commitment, whether due to domestic politics or targeted Russian pressure, would directly undermine Kyiv’s resilience. These tensions create political openings that Russia seeks to exploit through disinformation campaigns aimed at deepening divisions between Warsaw and Kyiv. While the drone attacks may force closer cooperation in air defense, the underlying political strains cannot be ignored.

Finally, such incidents should be understood not in isolation but as part of a cumulative pattern. In the two weeks following the Polish drone incursion, Russian drones entered Romanian and Danish airspace, Russian fighters intruded into Estonia, GPS interference disrupted a Spanish ministerial flight near Lithuania, and Russian jets flew over Poland’s Petrobaltic oil platform in the Baltic Sea. Taken together, these actions form a clear campaign of hybrid coercion designed to unsettle NATO’s periphery, impose political costs, and test the alliance’s unity across multiple theaters simultaneously. Unless addressed decisively, these risks could encourage further Russian experimentation with coercion below the threshold of war.

Conclusion

The September 10 drone incursions into Poland showed how Russia can impose disproportionate costs on NATO with low-price systems while sowing doubt through disinformation. The alliance’s initial response demonstrated solidarity but also revealed hesitation and divergent threat perceptions – precisely the weaknesses Moscow seeks to exploit.

Three priorities emerge.

First, allies must scale production of affordable air- and missile-defense systems, including counter-drone components, and embed industrial resilience into defense strategy.
Second, air defense must be treated as a shared asset, integrating Ukrainian operational innovations and ensuring national stockpiling does not undermine alliance support.
Third, hybrid and information operations must be countered proactively: Moscow will continue to wage narrative campaigns in tandem with kinetic probes. They require sustained political unity and forward-leaning deterrence as a response.

The credibility of NATO’s deterrence will be measured by whether these lessons evolve into enduring institutional changes (industrial, operational, and political) that would make other possible hybrid attacks meaningless. Without such developments, Russia’s next attack may find gaps where unity once held firm.

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^[1] known number of drones at that point in time

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