Tusk says Russia may send 'accidental' drones onto NATO's eastern flank

Donald Tusk told Poland's parliament on Thursday that the most likely scenario for the coming months includes Russian drone or missile strikes on countries that arm Ukraine, including Poland, presented afterward as accidents.

He said assessments from NATO, Ukrainian, Polish and US services, including the CIA, now line up. The aim, as he described it, is to weaken NATO cohesion and persuade members that Article 5 is theoretical. Article 5 treats an armed attack on one ally as an attack on all. Hybrid incidents have been testing where that line sits.

"There is a real risk that drones or other types of missiles could enter the territory of one or several NATO countries on the eastern flank and even cause damage," Tusk said. "The official narrative will be that it was an accident and that there is no reason for anyone to consider any kind of NATO response." He said such incidents could be repeated.

The week around the speech

On Thursday a Russian drone struck about four kilometres from the Polish border. Poland scrambled jets and issued air-raid alerts in Lubelskie and Podkarpackie. Tusk also said Russia has destroyed more than 300 Ukrainian railway locomotives in recent weeks and is hitting border crossings to cut supply lines into Ukraine.

He described the coming autumn and winter as a dangerous stretch for Ukrainian cities and for the warehouses and rail yards that feed the front. He said Poland's engineers would be ready to repair roads, rail and, if needed, energy infrastructure. Jet-powered drones, which fly higher and faster than the first-generation models, make detection harder, he said.

Tusk has warned for months about a more serious hybrid attack on a NATO state. Thursday was more specific because, he said, the intelligence had become consistent and persuasive.

What he is asking allies to decide in advance

The practical demand behind the speech is that NATO write its response to an "accidental" drone on Polish or Baltic ground before the wreckage is on the evening news. If each incident is debated as a possible mistake, Moscow gets a veto over Article 5 by controlling the adjective.

Poland already hosts a large rotating US force. Trump said this week that a permanent US Army base in Poland is close, without naming a site. Tusk's warning sits next to that announcement: a host country telling the alliance that the next test may arrive as a stray airframe, not a declared assault.

Russia has not confirmed any plan of the kind Tusk described. It has called previous airspace violations errors or Ukrainian provocations. That is the narrative Tusk says he expects to hear again. His bet is that saying so in the Sejm, with the intelligence attribution attached, makes it harder for allies to treat the next wreckage as a puzzle with no author.