Tusk Warns Russia Is Planning 'Accidental' Drone Strikes on NATO Countries This Winter

Since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022, drone and sabotage incidents along NATO's eastern flank have piled up fast in recent weeks, from a strike on a passenger train near the Polish border on September 13 to a shootdown over Lithuania on September 15. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk now says the intelligence picture points to something bigger: a coordinated Russian plan to hit NATO territory and blame it on accidents.

Tusk told the Sejm on September 17 that intelligence from NATO, Ukraine and the United States is "very consistent and convincing," according to The Guardian's coverage of the session. He said Russia is expected to stage incidents that look accidental, using them to test whether NATO's Article 5 mutual-defense guarantee is "more theoretical than practical."

"There is a real risk that drones or other types of projectiles could be launched into the territory of one or more NATO countries on the eastern flank," Tusk said, warning the goal is to make repeated incidents "an increasingly stark illustration of NATO's helplessness," per The Guardian. Euromaidan Press reported Tusk called late autumn and winter the most critical phase of the war so far.

The Incidents Already on the Board

This isn't hypothetical. On September 13, a drone struck a passenger train at Yahodyn near the Dorohusk border crossing, according to Euromaidan Press. Ukraine's state railway company said it was "highly probable" the target was a diplomatic train that had carried former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt. Former CIA Director David Petraeus was on a separate train at the station. No one was injured.

Two days later, Italian NATO jets shot down a drone that entered Lithuanian airspace from Belarus, with wreckage suggesting it likely carried explosives, Euromaidan Press reported. Poland separately recovered a Gerbera-type drone carrying a live warhead near Rusinowo on the Baltic coast. Germany, meanwhile, attributed an attempted drone attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport in early August to Russia in a statement issued September 1.

Polish Deputy Defence Minister Cezary Tomczyk told TVN24 that strikes near the Polish border are an attempt to cut Ukraine off from military supplies, and that CIA intelligence points to Russian scenarios involving sabotage across Europe on a scale "not witnessed before," as reported by Ukrainska Pravda's European edition.

Russia Pushes Back

Russia's Foreign Ministry rejected Tusk's accusations as "contrived" and "far-fetched," according to Euromaidan Press. No NATO country has invoked Article 5 over any of these incidents, and no formal investigation has publicly attributed a coordinated strategy to the Kremlin beyond Germany's Leipzig/Halle finding and Lithuania's shootdown assessment. The broader claim, that this is a deliberate campaign designed to erode NATO's collective will rather than isolated provocations, remains an intelligence assessment from Warsaw, Kyiv and Washington, not a proven fact.

A Polish account of the same Sejm speech, carried by EADaily, quoted Tusk saying Ukrainian forces are losing 27,000 people killed and wounded a month, which it called a record for the war. That figure did not appear in The Guardian's or Euromaidan Press's coverage of the identical address, and Ukraine's General Staff has not published a corroborating monthly casualty count in these reports.

Europe's Response, and the Argument It's Too Slow

Tusk visited Ukraine on September 18 for the inaugural Carpathian Eight summit, where Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine and European partners are building an "anti-ballistic coalition," per Euromaidan Press. Polish Deputy PM Radosław Sikorski said Warsaw is preparing its largest military aid package yet for Ukraine, potentially including Patriot missiles.

Kyiv Post's editorial board argues the word "hybrid" itself is the problem, calling it "a political sedative" that lets each government treat an attack as an isolated national incident rather than part of one campaign. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys is quoted saying "Russia's attacks against us are no longer hybrid. They are very kinetic." Sikorski made a similar point, saying the war has taken on a "kinetic dimension" that sits "on the border between hybrid warfare and outright aggression." Kyiv Post's proposed fix, treating every attributed Russian operation as an attack on European security and answering with a shared, pre-agreed ladder of sanctions, asset freezes, expulsions and, at the top, direct NATO air defense over western Ukraine, has not been adopted by any NATO body as policy.

What Changed in Washington

President Trump signed a Russia and Iran sanctions bill on September 17, according to The Epoch Times, days after the House passed it September 16 in a measure named for Senator Lindsey Graham. Moscow has warned the sanctions could make a peace deal harder to reach. Separately, the EU approved $3.8 billion in defense loans for Kyiv, including funds for 1,000 Patriot interceptor missiles, The Epoch Times reported September 18.

Zelenskyy said September 16 that Russia twice targeted his plane with drones as part of an intimidation strategy, and the U.S. Justice Department on September 15 charged Russian intelligence operatives in connection with a murder-for-hire plot against a Russian dissident living in the United States, per The Epoch Times.

The open question is whether any of these incidents cross the line from provocation to casualty. Poland's warhead-carrying drone and Lithuania's live-explosive wreckage show Russia has already put ordnance over NATO soil without anyone dying. Tusk's own warning is that the next one might not be so lucky, and NATO has not said publicly what it would do if it were.