Pole position

This incursion marks a serious escalation by Moscow. But it also highlights yet again that the West has no clear red lines and is unprepared to respond decisively if red lines that were taken for granted in the past — such as the territorial integrity of NATO members — are crossed.

This latest Russian escalation isn’t the usual war of words. It was only last week that Vladimir Putin warned that foreign troops in Ukraine would be legitimate targets for his invasion force. Though he slightly qualified his comments by noting that this would be the case “especially now, while the fighting is ongoing”, the message was nevertheless clear: Russia will oppose any international security guarantees that involve Western troops in Ukraine. 

This has been a long-standing and frequently articulated Russian position. Yet, Putin’s rhetoric threatening to target Western troops clearly ups the ante.

But these are not the only ways in which the Kremlin has markedly turned up the pressure over the past few weeks and months. Russia has also retained some momentum in its military campaign in Ukraine and has been further empowered by several successes on the diplomatic front. On the battlefield, Russia has continued to demonstrate significant advantages in manpower and military hardware.

Where the entire NATO alliance struggled to cope with the incursion of just 19 drones, Ukraine has been subject to an intense air campaign with hundreds of drones and often dozens of missiles every night for months.

The attacks have become more brazen, recently targeting Ukraine’s government building in Kyiv. They have also become more deadly, leading to increasing loss of civilian lives. As in past years, Russia has also targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure, which bodes ill for the winter, which is likely to be another grim one for the country.

On the ground, Russian gains have been small and Ukraine has regained strategically important territory around the key city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. Nonetheless, and this is what matters for Putin’s messaging, Russia is advancing, however incrementally and costly it might be.

Diplomatically, Putin received an important boost from the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Tianjin and subsequent bilateral deals agreed with China. He will have been cheered by the cordial relations on display between Russian, Chinese and North Korean leaders at the September 3 military parade to mark China’s victory over Japan in World War II.

Putin can now be more assured than ever that his partners will have his back — economically in the case of China and India, and militarily in the case of North Korea. Buoyed by such “successes” that his war machine will not suddenly grind to a halt, the Russian president felt confident enough to demand that Ukraine negotiate an end to the war with him or face the consequences of him ending the war by force.

Putin’s idea of a negotiated end to the war, however, is anything but that. What he has in mind is that Ukraine and its Western allies should simply accept his longstanding demands: territorial losses, no NATO membership and no Western forces to secure any peace deal.

This multi-layered Russian pressure campaign is not merely an accidental confluence of unrelated forces somehow magically lining up in Putin’s favour, but part of a carefully crafted campaign for Russia to retain relevance in what will probably shape up as a bipolar US and Chinese-dominated international order. If Putin has accepted Chinese dominance in Asia, he still sees opportunities for Russia to be the dominant power in Europe, and to restore at least part of its Soviet-era zone of influence.

For that to be achieved, the Kremlin needs to demonstrate that Ukraine’s Western partners are feckless in the face of Russian determination. So far, Putin is doing well. All of the deadlines and ultimatums set by US President Donald Trump have been ignored by Russia — at zero cost.

Trump’s response to Russian drones in Polish airspace was a short post on his Truth Social network that indicated surprise more than an actual response to what could quickly develop into a serious crisis. Meanwhile, Trump has yet to offer his support for a bipartisan bill in the US Senate to put more sanctions pressure on Russia.

Similarly, while European leaders have been quick and forceful in their condemnations of this latest Russian provocation, their reactions have, as usual, been at the rhetorical level.

Poland invoked NATO’s Article 4 procedure for formal consultations among allies in the North Atlantic Council, but its outcome was little more than a meek statement by Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, saying that “a full assessment of the incident is ongoing” and that the alliance “will closely monitor the situation along our eastern flank, our air defences continually at the ready”.

The statement by the EU’s foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas, offered solidarity with Poland and promised to “raise the cost for Moscow further by ramping up sanctions significantly on Russia and its enablers”. Given that the EU is preparing its 19th sanctions package and the war in Ukraine continues unabated, it’s hard to see a game changer here. 

Delivered the morning after the Russian drone incursions into Poland, the annual state of the union address by Ursula von der Leyen offered little more than confirmation of EU aspirations “to be able to take care of our own defence and security”.

None of this will have Putin worried. It should, however, worry Ukrainians and the rest of Europe.