The Suwalki Gap is a sparsely populated forest region, just 100km across, that connects Poland to Lithuania via two motorways and a train line. All eyes have been on this corner of Europe since Wednesday, when 19 Russian drones entered Polish airspace and either crashed or were shot down. On Friday a long-time pinch point in Nato’s European territory has never looked more vulnerable.
Russia’s militarised exclave of Kaliningrad lies to the north while, in Belarus to the south, an estimated 30,000 Russian and Belarusian soldiers have convened to test tanks, helicopters and “forward defence” strategies.
The last such war games in 2021 helped give Russia cover to launch its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
That’s why Poland is taking no chances and has posted up to 40,000 soldiers near the Suwalki Gap. At dawn Polish soldiers sealed the Brest-Terespol border crossing with concrete barriers and razor wire – and waited.
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Hours later in Brussels, with much fanfare but few details, Nato activated “Eastern Sentry”. It promises a new “comprehensive, integrated approach” to defending the alliance’s eastern border “with additional resources to concentrate forces where we need them”.
But as military tension built on Poland’s northeastern border on Friday, its prime minister Donald Tusk battled fresh political tension from Washington.
On Thursday evening US president Donald Trump suggested a seven-hour incursion of Russian-steered drones into Poland a day earlier “could have been a mistake”.
Tusk was quick to respond on X: “We would also wish that the drone attack on Poland was a mistake. But it wasn’t. And we know it.”
At 11.30pm on Tuesday, Poland entered a red-alert state with the first warnings of incoming drones from Belarusian airspace. Over the next seven hours, Poland says drones that didn’t crash land were shot down by Polish and Dutch fighter planes.
It was the first time Nato members are known to have fired shots during Russia’s war in Ukraine. After a long and uncertain night, Tusk said early on Wednesday there was “no reason to claim we’re on the brink of war but ... this situation brings us the closest we have been to open conflict since World War Two”.
On Friday, as Russia’s defence ministry released footage from Belarus of rolling tanks and swooping helicopters, Nato secretary general Mark Rutte warned Moscow: “It is up to Russia how far they will take this. We will defend ourselves.”
[ Poland will not be intimidated by Russian ‘provocation’, says presidentOpens in new window ]
Asked at a press conference about Trump’s “mistake” remarks, Rutte said it was “absolutely clear we all stand together” as the alliance continues to examine whether the Wednesday incursion was intentional.
“At this moment we are still assessing but whatever – yes or no – it was deliberate and it was reckless,” he said. On Friday Berlin and Paris became the latest European capitals to summon Russian diplomats and express diplomatic protest, following Spain, the Netherlands and other European Nato members. The Department of Foreign Affairs declined to comment on whether it would follow.
In advance of an emergency UN security council meeting on Friday, the EU announced a six-month extension on its sanctions against Russia that were set to expire on September 15th. Washington has reportedly stepped up demands that Europe goes further to seize frozen Russian assets worth an estimated $300 billion, in part to ramp up pressure on Moscow to join peace talks with Ukraine.
As escalation fears flashed across Europe this week, the talk around the Baltic Sea focused on additional military spending and the threshold for military action.
On Friday Denmark announced it was spending 58 billion crowns (€7.7 billion) to buy at least 10 land-based air and missile systems, the largest such military procurement in the country’s history.
Copenhagen’s tensions with the Trump administration over Greenland has seen a break with previous practice and no orders placed with US companies.
“Experience from Ukraine shows that ground-based air defence plays a crucial role,” said Danish defence minister Troels Lund Poulsen, “in protecting, among other things, the civilian population against Russian attacks from the air.”
Denmark spends about 3 per cent of its GDP on defence and security already and Friday’s decision to go even higher was welcomed across the political spectrum from the far right to the radical left.
As a counterpoint to the military spending boost, Denmark’s ruling Social Democrats are seeking a wider cultural shift by appointing the country’s first national rapporteur for “spiritual rearmament”.
Social Democratic MP Ida Auken defines her new role as “reminding us all why it is so important to live in a democracy and what the Danish values mean to us today”, with a particular focus on schools, churches, state institutions and the voluntary sector.
For many, the drone incursion has underlined how the EU is now engaged in a hybrid war with Russia, with disinformation and uncertain authorship of attacks all part of this new normal.
Take the trial in Finland of Georgian-born sea captain Davit Vadatchkoria. He is accused of allowing his ship’s lowered anchor drag along the Baltic Sea bed for 90km last December, severing crucial undersea power and data cables.
Vadatchkoria denies intentional wrongdoing and told the Helsinki court this week there were “no warning signs” that the anchor was lowered on his Cook Islands-registered ship.
Prosecutors don’t believe him and are seeking at least two-and-a-half years of imprisonment for him and two other crew members for aggravated criminal damage. But they have yet to link the ship officially to Russian-linked “shadowfleet” operations, including near undersea cables in Irish territorial waters.
Finnish president Alexander Stubb, with an eye on the Helsinki trial and the drone incursions, said in Kyiv on Thursday that Russia was intentionally “blurring the lines between peace and war”.
Finland’s nervous Baltic neighbours agree but fear they are about to lose valuable support. This week 36 MPs from Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia sent a letter to Washington, protesting against Trump administration plans to stop funding the Baltic Security Initiative – after $1 billion over the last five years.
Further south, there was only conditional sympathy for Poland from neighbouring Hungary. On X and on national radio, prime minister Viktor Orban described Poland as a “historic ally” and criticised the drone incursions as “unacceptable”. But Orbán, a regular visitor to Moscow, put partial blame on Poland for assisting Ukraine in fighting Russia’s invasion.
“We are not in it, we are not at war, we keep our distance,” he said, “while the Poles are up to their necks in it.”
In Germany on Thursday, just 28 hours after the last Russian drone was shot down in Polish airspace, every mobile phone in Germany emitted an unfamiliar howl at 11am on Thursday.
It was part of Germany’s annual Warntag (Warning Day), to test if the country’s digital-era infrastructure is working as well as its traditional sirens.
Sitting in a western Berlin cafe at the appointed hour on Thursday, the shock of the wails from everyone’s phones was nothing compared with the aftermath.
At first came nervous remarks and embarrassed conversations, as strangers silenced their phones. In the shattered silence, customers went back to reading about night-time Russian drone strikes in neighbouring Poland. As an elderly man finally managed to silence his blaring phone, he said: “I wonder will it be another year before we hear that sound again?”
