The Poles and the Balts have been warning about this for weeks. Now the Polish defense minister has said it publicly: Russia has captured a large number of Ukrainian drones and may be planning to use them against NATO.
“I expect a false flag attack on Russian territory, to which Putin ‘will respond,'” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in late June. He repeated the warning on July 9: “The Russians are planning something again; we have credible information.”
Now his colleague, Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, has added the specific threat: captured Ukrainian drones, turned around and flown at Poland or the Baltic states.
The precedent is already there
This is not speculation. It has already happened once.
On May 7, a Ukrainian drone, redirected by Russian electronic warfare, struck an oil storage facility in Rezekne, Latvia. The building was empty. No one was killed. But the political fallout was enormous: the Latvian prime minister resigned, along with another senior official.
If Russia can redirect a Ukrainian drone in flight and make it land on NATO territory, it can fly a captured drone deliberately into a target of its own choosing. The difference between an accident and an attack is intent, and Kosiniak-Kamysz is warning that the intent is now there.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk said allied intelligence agencies have been warning Poland for weeks about a possible Russian “test of NATO resolve” that could include an attack on Polish soil. “The coming months may truly be critical,” Tusk said.
The range of threats
The captured drone threat is one piece of a larger picture. Polish and Baltic officials have been warning about a coordinated campaign that could include:
- Drone incursions using captured Ukrainian UAVs
- GPS jamming, which has already affected the Baltic Sea region and caused airport closures
- Sabotage of critical infrastructure, a rail line in eastern Poland was disabled last year
- Cyber attacks on government and private networks
- “Limited kinetic operations” targeting infrastructure in Latvia and Lithuania
Latvian intelligence warned that Russia may prepare “hybrid attacks with missiles, drones or other actions designed to send a signal: stop supporting Ukraine, or you will have your own problems.”
The Kremlin dismissed all of it. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called the warnings “scare stories.”
Why now?
The timing is not random. Ukraine’s drone campaign against Russian refineries and logistics has been devastating, all 11 of Russia’s largest refineries have been hit, more than 30% of refining capacity is gone. Moscow is looking for ways to retaliate without triggering a direct NATO confrontation.
Using captured Ukrainian drones offers a form of deniability. The drones are Ukrainian-made. If one lands in Poland with Ukrainian markings, the Kremlin can claim it was a Ukrainian attack that went astray, even if Russian electronic warfare guided it there.
The Polish government has been sharing intelligence openly, in part because the same strategy worked before. Western capitals publicly shared intelligence before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which some analysts say delayed the invasion. Sikorski said he hopes the current public warnings will have a similar deterrent effect.
“The coming months may truly be critical.” The question is whether public warnings will be enough to deter an attack, or whether Russia has already decided that a limited strike on NATO territory is worth the risk.