Description: Polish fighter jets and air defense systems were rapidly activated after up to 19 Russian Gerbera drones violated Poland’s airspace. The drones were part of a larger Russian aerial assault in eastern Ukraine and were suspected of drifting out of the radar grid, entering Polish airspace unintentionally. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, has asked NATO members to invoke Article 4 of the general treaty, which states that allied members would meet and discuss an appropriate countermeasure and response mechanisms in cases where the defense of one of the states is endangered. Russia hasn’t clarified whether the drones were intentionally deployed towards Poland, remaining vague in its public statements, as Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov has said that blaming and criticizing Russia has been a daily occurrence in Europe.
Impact: Russia’s intentional or unintentional deployment of drones in the Polish airspace was a trilateral modus of testing NATO’s resolve and exploring the provisions of the Alliance’s collective defense policy. Russia has also tested the preparedness of the regional air forces, as fighter jets were scrambled from Italy and the Netherlands to intervene on the Polish border. Incidents such as this could be considered as a telegraphed message which discloses information through two very different prisms. The initial component of the gathered information is regarding the hard defensive capabilities of NATO, especially in countries such as Poland, close to the Ukrainian front and bordering Russian allied countries such as Belarus. The second component is testing the political dimension of the response, or what would be the public outcry in combination with practical steps to strengthen defensive capabilities. The incident shouldn’t be perceived as an open act of aggression or call for war beyond the scope of Russian provocation on par with consistent violations of the airspace of several other NATO countries in the Baltic.