Poland has made an emergency request to invoke Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty after being hit by a wave of Russian drones on Wednesday. According to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, at least nineteen Russian drones invaded Polish airspace. This resulted in scrambling an array of NATO fighters and in Prime Minister Tusk requesting activation of NATO's Article 4, which states: "The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened."
Our early coverage of the drone invasion of Poland can be found at Polish Air Force Engages Russian Drones; Key Polish Airport Shut for 'Unplanned Military Activity.'
Polish airspace was violated by at least 19 Russian drones overnight, the country's prime minister said, in a torrent of activity that triggered a response from the NATO country's air force, which scrambled and downed several of the drones.
— ABC News (@ABC) September 10, 2025
Read more: https://t.co/X3Mk3ogVp7 pic.twitter.com/xBAvdwKAcD
The Polish air defense system managed to shoot down three, and possibly four, of the drones. No lives were lost, but there was property damage. Polish F-16s and at least one Dutch F-35 were involved in the interceptions.
Locations in Poland where Russian drones were found today shown on a map:
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) September 10, 2025
Cześniki (Zamość County, Lublin Voivodeship) - 1 drone,
Czosnówka (Bialski County, Lublin Voivodeship) - 1 drone,
Wyryki Wola (Włodawa County, Lublin Voivodeship) - 1 drone and a damaged building,… pic.twitter.com/tVfugCeOrA
Someone's home in Poland after the russian drone attack last night. pic.twitter.com/YNcwR8N915
— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) September 10, 2025
The small number of interceptions does not reflect a lack of proficiency. Typically, the only drones or missiles intercepted are those whose course seems to be a population center or critical facility.
This attack took place in the context of a Russian attack on multiple areas of Ukraine, comprising 415 drones, 42 cruise missiles, and one ballistic missile. The drones, which were part of that attack, entered Poland after transiting Belarusian airspace. At this point, they seem to be unarmed Gerbera reconnaissance/decony drones.
The drones may have been driven off course by electronic warfare operations conducted by Ukraine. However, the type of drones and their flight path indicate that this was a deliberate probe of Poland's air defense and air defense reaction time. The unarmed drones were unlikely to produce casualties, and the likelihood that 100% of drones driven off course by EW operations being the same type seems vanishingly small.
Map showing reported Russian drone incursions into Poland. Does not look random (14 drones): It looks like a deliberate attempt by fascist Russia to test NATO air defenses over a part of Polish territory used as a transit point for Western aid to democratic Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/9mSafIV0gB
— Euan MacDonald (@Euan_MacDonald) September 10, 2025
Prime MinisterTusk also noticed that this event differed from previous airspace violations by Russian drones in a major way. “What is new is the direction from which the drones violating Polish airspace came — for the first time in the history of this war, they did not come from over Ukraine [but] a significant portion of these drones flew over Poland directly from Belarus,” he said. He was not alone.
Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign affairs representative, said that this was “the most serious European airspace violation by Russia since the war began, and indications suggest it was intentional, not accidental.”
This would add weight to the theory that it was a probing attack on Poland and not an accident. Nineteen unarmed drones straying out of the drone swarm attacking Ukraine and ending up in Poland by way of Belarus seems to require a heroic use of the Law of Truly Large Numbers to be considered plausible.
For its part, Russia is saying it had nothing to do with this episode.
The Russian chargé d’affaires in Poland, Andrei Ordash, dismissed the allegations of violations of Polish airspace. “We consider the accusations groundless,” he told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti. “No evidence that these drones are of Russian origin has been presented.”
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said “no targets on Polish territory were planned," when asked about the incident.
The Russians claim they are willing to talk about the drones that they totally did not launch and which could not have possibly been part of the attack on Ukraine.
It reported that Russian forces had carried out a strike on Ukrainian military-industrial enterprises in the Ivano-Frankovsk, Khmelnitsky and Zhitomir regions, as well as on the cities of Vinnitsa and Lvov. No facilities in Poland were planned to be targeted. The range of the unmanned aerial vehicles that have purportedly crossed the Polish border does not surpass 700 kilometers.
"However, we are ready to hold consultations with the Polish Defense Ministry on this matter," the Russian Defense Ministry emphasized.
It won't be long before the "false flag" theory will be popularized by the usual suspects. Though in the context of relatively short-range drones entering Poland from the unusual direction of Belarus, Belarus running to the microphones to emphasize their role in warning Poland makes a lot more sense. As we said in high school, "he who smelt it dealt it."
🇧🇾🇵🇱 Belarus exchanged drone data with Poland, — Belarus Ministry of Defense
— dana (@dana916) September 10, 2025
▪️The department stated that at night there was a "mutual exchange of UAV strikes between Russia and Ukraine." Some drones lost their course due to electronic warfare and entered Belarusian and Polish… pic.twitter.com/fmnjtcbdwi
The real question here is whether this attack and the request for consultations will have any effect on President Trump. He has repeatedly vowed to increase sanctions on Russia but has found some nebulous reason to renege time and again. Last night, even as Russian drones were violating the airspace of our NATO ally, Vice President Vance seemed to take economic isolation of Russia as a means to end the war off the table.
Vance is claiming that buying gas and oil from russia will somehow guarantee "durable peace" as if he’s spent the last two decades under a rock. Every single time rewarding russian aggression with new contracts fueled more aggression. Every.Single.Time.
— Kate from Kharkiv (@BohuslavskaKate) September 10, 2025
God, we are so screwed. pic.twitter.com/q6flwiQ8Dw
There is nothing about this case that is benign. Assuming the best-case scenario that this was an accident, then Poland logically has to consider establishing a high-intensity air defense zone over Western Ukraine and up to the border of Belarus to protect itself from Russian blunders. The best-case scenario seems mathematically unlikely. The implication of Russia probing NATO air defenses to gauge response and response time leads in only one direction, and that is of a Russian military adventure in the Baltic states or in the Suwalki Gap.
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