Russia’s war of aggression has reached Poland

Talk of peace was in the air. Russian president Vladimir Putin had met his US counterpart, Donald Trump, in Anchorage, Alaska to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. Putin called the confab ‘useful’ and ‘ timely’, a chance to ‘move on to resolving all issues by peaceful means’. Immediately afterwards there was excitable, albeit vague, speculation about future peace negotiations, possibly even involving Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in direct contact with Putin himself.

A month on and Moscow has shown just how empty this talk of peace was. Since the Alaskan summit, the Kremlin has effectively escalated its barbaric war of aggression against Ukraine. Just days after Putin warmly embraced Trump, Russia launched one of the largest attacks of the war, firing over 500 drones and 40 missiles into Ukrainian territory. It even took out an American electronics factory, specialising in household not military appliances, in western Ukraine. This weekend, Russia topped that with its biggest drone assault so far, bombarding Kyiv and other areas, hitting Ukrainian government buildings. And on Tuesday night, Moscow went even further, launching a massive drone assault, in which several drones, whether by accident or design, flew deep into Polish territory.

The details of this latest escalation-cum-provocation are still emerging. According to reports, Polish, Dutch and Italian aircraft intercepted several drones in Polish airspace. The Polish government recorded 19 airspace violations, and says that four drones were subsequently brought down. It described what happened as ‘an act of aggression that posed a real threat to the safety of our civilians’. Russia has claimed, simply and ambiguously, that it had no plans to attack Poland.

So now, as it stands, NATO allies have been dragged into their most significant clash with the Russian military during the war so far. The risks of further escalation should be clear.

Yet there’s also a danger of overplaying the uniqueness of the incident itself. In April 2023, the wreck of a Russian missile was discovered in forests near Bydgoszcz, over 300 miles into Polish territory. It had likely been fired by Russia some four months prior to its eventual discovery.

Furthermore, as The Times has reported, Russian drones have repeatedly been entering NATO airspace in recent months – and especially since the putative peace summit. One Russian drone travelled 60 miles into Polish airspace three weeks ago – that is, just days after Trump and Putin were warmly embracing – before exploding in the village of Osiny, just 50 miles east of the capital, Warsaw. In the past week alone, several drones with ‘cyrillic markings’ have entered Polish airspace and crashed just inside the border with Belarus. Russian drones have also flown largely undetected into Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and even Croatia. Far from last night’s drone incursion marking an ‘unprecedented violation’ of NATO airspace, it appears to be something that is becoming all too routine.

As a result of the latest incursion, Poland, as military experts predicted, has invoked NATO’s Article 4. This will prompt some sort of alliance-wide confab and no doubt lead to talk of improving NATO’s aerial capabilities and bolstering its defences on its eastern flank.

Not that this will help Ukraine. The truth is that Russian drone incursions are becoming more frequent not because Moscow is expanding the war, but because it is intensifying it in Ukraine. It is sending ever larger waves of drones and missiles into Ukraine, hitting central and even western areas, as well as the frontline in the east. It is upping the aggression, heightening the damage and deepening the misery of Ukrainians. And, in consequence, some of the Kremlin’s barbaric war effort is now spilling out into surrounding areas far more frequently.

That Moscow is cranking up this military offensive – a few weeks after ostentatiously ‘pursuing peace’, as the Anchorage summit slogan had it – is not a coincidence. Russia is on the front foot, as Ukrainian forces struggle to hold their lines in the east, amid chronic manpower shortages, economic devastation and collapsing public morale. At the same time as chatting peace with Trump on the phone, Putin is trying to push home Russia’s military advantage. All so as to force Ukraine to accept ‘peace’ on Moscow’s punitive terms – including ceding land not currently occupied by Russia and future demilitarisation.

So Putin may speak of resolving what he called the Ukraine ‘crisis’ through ‘peaceful means’. But the countless, ever larger drone and missile strikes launched since give the lie to his statements. More than ever, Moscow is intent on destroying Ukraine’s sovereignty through force of arms. Putin’s version of peace looks more and more like conquest.

Tim Black is associate editor of spiked.