When Russian drones strayed into Polish airspace, the first—and loudest—alarms were raised not in Warsaw but in Kyiv.
When they did respond, Polish officials struck a careful balance. They condemned the breach of sovereignty but stopped short of calling it an attack or invoking Nato’s Article 5, which could have triggered debate over collective retaliation. In Kyiv, by contrast, the language was far sharper. Ukraine’s defence minister branded the incident a “military crime” and warned that Russia was preparing to “be ready for war with Nato”. The strategy was plain: to frame the incursion in terms that might draw Europe and the United States more deeply into the conflict.
In UnHerd today, Michal Kranz argues that Russia’s “battleground” has now “dramatically shifted westward” to eastern Poland and the Baltic states. There is no question that the breach was a violation of Polish airspace and another example of Russia’s habitual grey-zone harassment of its European neighbours—but little more.
Washington and Brussels must resist both the scaremongering and the pressure to hit back at Moscow with fresh military or economic measures. A wider war is not in anyone’s interests, not even Kyiv’s. If anything, the events in Poland underscore the urgency of ending the war quickly. The Trump administration should double down on diplomacy, not coercion.
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