Poland rebuffs Trump, saying Russian drone incident wasn’t a mistake
Polish leaders on Friday rejected President Donald Trump’s suggestion that the Russian drones that invaded NATO airspace this week might have been a “mistake.”
“We would also wish that the drone attack on Poland was a mistake,” Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, posted on X. “But it wasn’t. And we know it.”
Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, also chimed in, writing on X late Thursday in response to Trump’s comment, “No, that wasn’t a mistake.”
NATO’s top political and military leaders said it was still not clear whether the Russian incursion was deliberate but said the U.S.-led alliance would implement a new initiative called Eastern Sentry, aimed at bolstering defenses along its entire eastern flank – a pointed warning to Moscow.
Jabbing a lectern with his finger at a news conference late Friday afternoon, Secretary General Mark Rutte called the Russian breach “dangerous and unacceptable” regardless of intent.
On Wednesday, NATO scrambled fighter jets to shoot down Russian drones that entered Polish airspace as Russia was bombarding targets in Ukraine. Polish officials said that there were 19 violations and that at least three drones were shot down. The drones appear to have been unarmed decoys often used to distract air defenses.
Trump, responding to a reporter’s question on Thursday, mused: “It could have been a mistake. ”
Initially, Trump had reacted cryptically to the drone incursion, writing on Truth Social: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!”
On Friday, Trump – who at times has been much more willing than European leaders to negotiate with Russia – expressed frustration with President Vladimir Putin, saying his patience with the Russian leader was running out.
“It’s sort of running out and running out fast,” Trump said in an interview on “Fox & Friends,” echoing a sentiment he has expressed for weeks, even before he met Putin in Alaska last month. Trump added: “We’re going to have to come down very, very strong.”
In the interview, Trump also briefly addressed Putin’s role in the drone incursion, saying, “I’m not going to defend anybody … but he shouldn’t be that close to Poland anyway.”
Rutte has said repeatedly that NATO has not yet concluded whether the drones were deliberately sent into Polish airspace, a position he reiterated Friday afternoon at the news conference with Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe.
“Obviously, day by day, we get more insights,” he said at a news conference in Brussels. “I won’t share them with you.” He added, “The truth is that at this moment, we are still assessing.”
Rutte said that the Eastern Sentry program would be modeled on an existing Baltic Sentry operation, which added an array of new weapons, surveillance efforts and other assets to defend the Baltic states, and that the new initiative would be designed to defend against drones and other threats.
Grynkewich said the extent of Wednesday’s drone incursion into NATO airspace was a catalyst for the program. “Clearly, with the number that came across the border, it’s time to take a fresh look at this,” he said.
Eastern European leaders have rejected the notion that the incursion was anything other than a targeted provocation.
Some have suggested Russia wanted to gauge NATO’s response times and capabilities, others that Moscow wants to diminish the willingness of European nations to send air defenses to Ukraine by making them fearful that those weapons will be needed at home.
“This was a deliberate and coordinated strike constituting an unprecedented provocation and escalation of tension,” the foreign ministers of Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine said in a joint statement Thursday.
Russian officials have denied that any of their unmanned aerial vehicles entered Polish airspace. Polish investigators have collected the debris for forensic analysis.
The incident appeared to be Russia’s most provocative test of NATO’s collective defense capabilities since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, leading some allies to worry that an insufficient response will embolden Putin to be even more brazenly aggressive and will put other eastern NATO members, including the Baltic nations, at risk.
While some Western leaders, including Rutte, said the incident demonstrated NATO’s ability to defend all of its territory, some military analysts said it also showed that the U.S.-led alliance is not sufficiently prepared to counter Russia’s growing fleet of relatively cheap, highly maneuverable drones.
On Wednesday, Tusk said Poland had requested to activate Article 4 of the NATO treaty, triggering a consultation among NATO allies about whether one of the members was being threatened.
Russian officials have denied responsibility, and some pro-Kremlin voices have asserted without evidence that the drones were sent into Poland by Ukraine. Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, said Thursday that Poland had “no evidence” of a Russian breach of its airspace.