Murat SofuogluWhen President Donald Trump pledged to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of assuming office, he raised hopes of a quick solution to the protracted conflict.
But many months later, the war appears to have taken a potentially dangerous turn with Russian drones reportedly violating airspace over Poland and Romania and Moscow facing allegations of provoking NATO members.
Many top security officials and experts have warned against a dire scenario in which the US-led NATO alliance and Russia are drawn into a broader conflict across Eastern Europe, a strategic region which was once the battleground for dominance between Moscow and Washington during the Cold War.
While Trump initially suggested that Russian drones flying through Polish airspace "could have been a mistake", others – like Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski – did not buy this argument. "You can believe that one or two veer off target, but 19 mistakes in one night, over seven hours, sorry, I don't believe it," Sikorski said.
More than three-and-half years into the Russian military incursion into Ukraine, drones are playing a major role in the war, with both countries using the unmanned vehicles to strike deep into each other’s territories.
Last week, Russian drones appeared to have crossed a red line.
Alistair Edgar, a political scientist and academic at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, tells TRT World that the Russian drones sent into Poland were not “accidental”.
“Although they were not intended as strikes, Russia is provoking and also testing to see NATO's response and surveilling the layers of defence that might be utilised,” says Edgar, who earlier worked at the New York-based Academic Council on the United Nations System.
Faced with a barrage of criticism, Russia has blamed Ukraine for the drones over Romania, accusing Kiev of staging false flag operations to discredit the Kremlin.
Sergei Markov, a leading Russian academic and a former adviser to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, cites the West’s own arguments to counter the drone narrative.
“If Russia is failing in the Ukraine war with very high casualties, as the Western media claims, why is it trying to even spread the war to other parts of Europe?” Markov tells TRT World, adding that Moscow has no interest in provoking NATO countries.
Escalating tensions
Russia has long seen Ukraine’s ambition of joining NATO as a security threat, as it fears that such a development would bring forces of the security alliance right to its borders.
With its NATO hopes in limbo due to the war, Russia feels that Ukraine is trying to create a situation that would drag the alliance into the war.
To bolster this argument, Markov cites Moscow’s line of thinking to explain the presence of Russian drones over Poland – the Russian-made drones were sent into Polish territory by Ukrainian authorities in a false-flag operation by using captured drones.
“Ukraine is provoking Poland and other NATO countries to fight against Russia, laying out a political atmosphere in which they can receive more sophisticated weapons from Western countries,” Markov says.
Markov accuses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of conspiring against Russia, and claims that Poland also participated in this conspiracy.
“Why none of these drones have any explosives on them?” he asks, picking holes in the argument that these UAVs were meant as offensive manoeuvres.
Poland, which has a long history of grievances against Russia, however, has no doubts about Moscow’s intentions.
According to the Polish foreign ministry, three or four out of the 19 Russian drones were shot down, seen by some analysts as a sign of unreadiness of Polish defence forces.
After the incident, the Polish president authorised NATO troop deployment in the Eastern European country.
“NATO’s air defences were activated and successfully ensured the defence of NATO territory” against Russian drone incursion, said Mark Rutte, the alliance's general secretary. After the drone incident, NATO decided to launch ‘Eastern Sentry’ to bolster the alliance’s defences across its eastern flank.
Operation Eastern Sentry was triggered by Poland’s invocation of NATO’s Article 4, which allows a fellow member to call other allies to discuss a possibility that “the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened” by an enemy force. Since NATO’s creation in 1949, Article 4 has been invoked only seven times.
The invocation of Article 4 is also intrinsic to NATO’s main principle, Article 5, which obliges members to commit to collective defence if one of them comes under attack.
Significantly, the drone episode comes amid joint military drills, Zapad 2025, by Russia and Belarus, seen by many as a show of strength by Moscow.
What is Russia aiming for?
Political scientist Edgar sees several Russian motivations behind the drone incursions across Poland and Romania, from drawing European NATO members' resources away – at least temporarily – from supporting Ukraine to defend other eastern European countries.
This he likens to “sending up a trial balloon” to engage adversaries in grey zone conflicts, which security experts call ‘operations other than war’.
“Putin will push as far as he can…,” Edgar says. “NATO will never strike first directly at Russia, so it would require a clear military action by Russia against a NATO member for a 'confrontation' to turn into direct military conflict. Putin is more than willing to push confrontation, but not conflict.”
But according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, NATO is already “at war with Russia” and “de facto involved in this war”, referring to the Ukraine conflict and increasing tensions across Eastern Europe. This situation “is obvious”, which “does not require any additional evidence," Peskov added.
A weakness lies behind this Russian assertion against NATO, according to Edgar. Russia has “more than one million casualties killed or wounded”, and Putin’s hopes of a quick victory are still unfulfilled after more than three years, he adds.
“Putin has to pretend to be 'strong' and cannot be seen to be failing against the defence forces of Ukraine; so Peskov needs to blame NATO for that failure to defeat Ukraine according to the initial promises and expectations of the 2022 invasion,” he says. If Russia retreats from Ukrainian territory, the war will end once and for all, he adds.
Like Edgar, Ecaterina Matoi, an independent Bucharest-based security and political consultant, also believes that Russia and NATO do not want a direct military conflict.
“The Russian Federation wants to have a confrontation with NATO as much as NATO wants to have a confrontation with the Russian Federation,” Matoi tells TRT World.
Matoi has evidence for this approach, drawing attention to the fact that while Romanian F-16 fighter jets identified Russian drones in their airspace, they decided not to attack the drones based on risk assessments.
“In my opinion, it was a wise approach given the circumstances. The drone did not cause any damage and returned to Ukrainian airspace.”
On this point, Markov is also in agreement with Edgar and Matoi that Moscow does not want any confrontation with NATO, an oft-repeated assertion by the Kremlin.
“But the Ukraine war will continue as it is and Zelenskyy will try his best to spread this conflict to other parts of Europe to trigger a direct war between Russia and NATO,” he claims.
