Whether by accident or malice, the Russians are risking a wider war in Europe.
Overnight, NATO fired shots against multiple Russian weapons that violated the alliance’s airspace. According to Polish authorities, at least 19 Russian drones crossed into Poland last night, prompting a response from Polish and Dutch jets backed by support units from Germany and Italy. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told his Parliament it was “the closest we have been to open conflict since World War Two.” (He added, hopefully, that he had “no reason to believe we’re on the brink of war.”)
When the first reports arrived last night about a handful of drones crossing into Poland, the incursion looked like a possible Russian error, a small number of off-course units from a massive salvo of more than 400 drones sent against Ukraine. The air over Ukraine is full of hazards, and Ukrainian and Russian electronic warfare can send unmanned vehicles spiraling away from their intended targets. For the first time, however, some of these drones crossed into Poland from Belarus; Minsk says these were errant units affected by jamming and that Belarus itself shot some of them down (but without saying who owned them). However, at least one senior Polish general believes that the drone attack was a joint Russian-Belarusan operation.
A few drones, or even six or seven, are one thing. Nineteen spread across much of eastern Poland is a different matter entirely. As Ian Fleming’s notorious villain Goldfinger said to James Bond after repeatedly finding 007 meddling in his affairs: “Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”
It’s too early to reach a definitive conclusion on Russian motives last night. Whether by accident or malice, the Russians are risking a wider war in Europe. The only path to reducing such a threat is for Moscow to call off its campaign of butchery in Ukraine, and only the Americans can bring enough diplomatic, financial, and military power to bear to convince the Kremlin that it can never win this war.
Unfortunately, the Americans are AWOL. Whatever Donald Trump said to Vladimir Putin in Alaska clearly didn’t matter.
