Instead of the public debating when the bloody conflict could end after three and a half years of intense war in Ukraine, recent Russian military actions have given arguments to pessimists who claim that the conflict could soon even spread to neighboring European countries. In the last twenty days, a whole series of violations of the airspace of NATO members such as Poland, Denmark, Romania and Estonia, whose citizens were flown over their heads by various combat and non-combat drones and other aircraft, was recorded. And while the interested parties are unanimous in their assessment that Russia is behind everything, it is not entirely clear why the president of that country, Vladimir Putin, is doing this and what he gets out of it. There are three schools of thought and each has some logical support.
PUTIN'S THREE MOTIVES
According to one claim, Putin wants to force the leading NATO countries of Europe to increase defense spending, which could result in a decrease in spending for Ukraine. Another reason official Moscow allegedly decided to act like this is to achieve a pure foreign policy goal. Putin allegedly wants to show the European public that the United States of America (USA) is not ready to become more actively involved in their defense and thus exploits the split between Europe and the USA, which has been evident since the new US President Donald Trump moved into the White House. A third motive for sending swarms of drones to Europe could be determined by Russia's domestic politics. Such an aggressive performance, which will probably pass without major consequences, could be a solid substitute for the sloppy conduct of the war in Ukraine, whose successful outcome for Russia, despite certain territorial gains recently, few can imagine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hastened to announce that these attacks are a prelude to Russian aggression against another neighboring country, but such a thing is unlikely, bearing in mind that Russia suffers from a chronic lack of technical and human resources even for conducting the current war with Ukraine.
HOW IT ALL BEGAN?
It all started on September 9, when, during joint military exercises between Russia and Belarus, twenty combat drones of the Russian army flew into Polish airspace. The fighter, missile and radar units of one of the most powerful NATO armies were immediately alerted, but even so, the Polish air defense achieved a relatively modest result. A total of four drones were shot down, and the only major damage was caused when an AIM-120 air-to-air missile, fired from an F-16 of the Polish Air Force, mistakenly landed on the roof of a house in the vicinity of Lublin, in the southeastern part of the country. Other drones have crashed across Poland, some at military bases, but apparently all ended without casualties.
From a formal and legal point of view, such an action can be considered an act of aggression, which is why article four of the NATO charter, which regulates the basis for joint action in the field of defense, was also activated. However, apart from verbal condemnations of Russia's actions, nothing concrete happened, while even the Russian explanation of the incident was unusually lukewarm and unconvincing.
US President Donald Trump, responding to a journalist's question, laconically said that NATO countries in Russia's neighborhood should shoot down any drone or plane that violates the airspace of one of them. But that's easier said than done if you take into account the large expanses that need to be defended and the relatively meager air defense capabilities of most countries, with the exception of Poland and, partially, Romania.
At first, it was believed that the Russian incursion could be the result of a mistake, because in a situation where several hundred drones are sent to Ukraine, a failure of only five percent can produce the effect of an incursion into the wrong country, especially before it was noticed that a number of those drones were unarmed, that is, they are full-sized decoys on which the Ukrainian air defense should spend the remaining expensive missiles. Those assumptions fell into the water when a series of similar incidents were recorded in Denmark, Romania and Estonia in the following days. Romania raised F-16 fighters on duty, which "followed an unidentified drone" to the border with Ukraine, while an unidentified fighter, most likely a Russian MiG-31, repeatedly violated the airspace of Estonia on September 19. A few days later, Denmark closed the airport in Copenhagen when drones, possibly launched from Russian ships, were spotted near the facility. The event caused real chaos in air traffic in that part of Europe, and as a result, Denmark called a certain number of reservists into service, in order to be able to respond to possible challenges of this type in the future. France joined in, deploying a 35-man anti-drone unit ahead of the EU summit in Copenhagen.
photo: ap...
WHY DRONES??
Most defense and international relations experts do not doubt that Russia is behind everything, which is not difficult to prove by analyzing the remains of downed aircraft and interpreting the path of movement of those drones in cases where it was recorded by a radar image. What could be a question is why Russia chose drones as a tool to conduct a kind of asymmetric cold war against the neighboring NATO countries.
Drones are relatively cheap and their loss is not as big a problem, neither militarily, politically nor financially, as the loss of a manned aircraft might be. Secondly, they are difficult to detect due to the low speed and reflective surface of these aircraft, so the deployment of drones in large swarms creates huge problems for the adversary. At the moment, despite the efforts of the world's leading military industries, there is no effective way to timely detect, track and shoot down unmanned aerial vehicles, especially small and micro drones, and that is why their presence on the battlefield has greatly changed the way war is conducted.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russia has developed the ability to produce massive amounts of drones. Unlike classic airplanes and helicopters, whose production is still measured in single digits, drones are very accessible and can be shipped in huge quantities. The data shows that at the end of the first year of the war, the Russian army sent about 40 drones to Ukrainian positions per month, and at that time the Ukrainians had significantly greater capacities and were in the lead in this regard. With the support of Iran and China, Russia slowly increased its drone production capacity and in September 2024 had the ability to use about 1000 of these aircraft per month. At the end of last year, an attack was recorded in which as many as 188 drones were used, while in May of this year, in one case, as many as 500 of these aircraft were sent to Ukrainian targets. It is estimated that at the end of the summer, the Russian army reached the ability to use as many as 6000 larger drones per month. If we take into account the annual production of about a million small and micro FPV drones, the only limiting factor becomes the number of operators, not the number of drones.
This turnaround occurred after the long-time Minister of Defense of Russia, Sergei Shoigu, was appointed Andrei Belousov, an economist without a particular military pedigree, whose main task was to equip the domestic industry for war needs and redirect it to military production.
DANGEROUS PLAYING BY SPREADING CONFLICT
Moscow's decision to use an aggressive approach to cause fear among the leading NATO countries and force them to invest huge funds in strengthening their own defense, instead of passing them on to Ukraine, makes sense from a military point of view. All the more so since we are dealing with the countries that make up the so-called "coalition of the willing" which should continue to provide support to Ukraine if the US, due to the whims of its president, loses the enthusiasm to continue doing so. In this way, the Russian side can create a clear insight into the capabilities of potential enemies, into their procedures and the actions they take when they are attacked. The military aspect, therefore, is not disputed.
Politically speaking, it really seems humiliating when the whole world sees that Russian actions pass without major consequences and when it is clear that the system of European collective security depends on who is on the other side. This may have lasting consequences for relations between Europe and the US. Russian actions highlight the fact that Europe is far from any meaningful joint action on defense and that different armies, different equipment and different levels of training are still an insurmountable obstacle to the fulfillment of the former dream of a common European army. Sending drones to European countries allows Russia to sell to its own public opinion the story of a hybrid war against NATO, with the aim of destabilizing the West, which actually has some results, unlike the current conflict, which seems to be permanently stuck in the Ukrainian black soil.
We should not underestimate the psychological effect on the local population, which until now believed that the war in Ukraine was not only against former brothers of the same faith, but much more against the "collective West". That population will now watch with almost unconcealed joy the chaos caused by Russian drones across Europe, even if that success was exhausted in the disorderly flight order at the airport in Copenhagen. The problem is that all this cannot be seen beyond the possible security, political and even economic consequences that Russia may suffer in the future. Despite Trump's radical rhetoric about the need to shoot down Russian aircraft, it is clear that NATO countries will not do anything now that could provoke the wrath of that nuclear power, even if they had the necessary military capabilities.
Russia's dangerous game of escalation may not lead to global war this time because it has neither the capacity nor the will to do so. In the long term, however, Russia runs the risk of further encouraging anti-Russian sentiment in Europe with these actions, not thinking that it would be appropriate to continue economic and other cooperation with those countries after the war.
