On the morning of September 23rd a Russian Mi-8 helicopter lifted off from the Kaliningrad exclave, crossed into Poland near the town of Braniewo, lingered for 42 seconds and 300 metres, then flew home. Nobody fired a shot. Polish radar tracked the aircraft the entire time; fighter jets were scrambled and ground forces put on standby, exactly as the manual prescribes. That is roughly the point: an incursion this small only matters if the victim can prove, second by second, how small it was. Poland's Operational Command put it more bluntly: "Russia is once again testing the readiness of our air defences."
It was merely the latest entry in a lengthening ledger. Earlier in September, a suspected Russian drone washed up on a Baltic beach near Jarosławiec; Poland scrambled jets after Russian jet-powered drones struck targets in Ukraine near its border; a Russian warship fired flares at a Danish helicopter in the Baltic; and Italian F-35s, part of NATO's beefed-up air-policing mission, shot down a drone carrying an explosive device over Lithuania. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, called the episodes "part of a broader pattern of Russian aggression and provocation against Europe, testing our readiness and our resolve”. It builds on the much larger incursion of September 2025, when up to 23 Russian drones entered Polish airspace in a single night, several were shot down by Dutch F-35s, and Prime Minister Donald Tusk called it the closest Poland had come to open conflict since the second world war.
When sabotage moves from the sky to the substation: Russia’s diversifying tactics against an increasing number of targets
Sabotage has kept pace with the airspace violations. Late at night on September 23rd, arsonists – described by investigators as "professionals" – burned down a Starlink relay station at Wola Krobowska, operated on land leased from the state firm Exatel. Poland's National Prosecutor's Office opened a terrorism and sabotage investigation, suspecting agents acting for Russian intelligence sought to disrupt satellite links used by Ukraine, the Polish military, the presidential protection service and public administration. The fire broke out at the same moment Russia launched a missile barrage against Ukrainian internet infrastructure – and this was hardly a coincidence. The network kept functioning by rerouting traffic, but the message was unmistakable: Poland's civilian backbone, not just its skies, is now a target.
Analysts at Poland's Centre for Research on Terrorism describe a deliberate tactical shift. Russia, they say, has largely abandoned the amateur, internet-recruited saboteurs whose clumsy arson attempts made headlines in 2023-24, replacing them with trained operatives who speak local languages and blend in. "Today, Polish territory is also the front," argues Dr Paulina Piasecka of the Centre, who notes that the target list has grown from a few hundred nationally significant sites to several thousand regional ones – waterworks, heating plants, transport hubs. "We must guard everything, everywhere, against everyone at once, while the adversary succeeds even by finding single cracks in our system."
Sabotage, cyberattacks on energy and health systems, GPS jamming across the Baltic, weaponised migration, and election interference – until recently, Russia perceived hybrid aggression as entailing little cost, which emboldened it to continue testing the Alliance further, even without resorting to open warfare. However, the Kremlin’s strategy appears to have shifted recently.
The foiled assassination of a dual American-Ukrainian citizen on Polish soil in August indicates that Moscow is willing to court a direct clash with American interests, not merely Polish ones.
Worst case scenarios: an attack on the Suwałki Gap paired with the threat of nuclear warfare
Not everyone agrees escalation is imminent, but few dismiss it. Gen. Stanisław Koziej, a former head of Poland's National Security Bureau, argues that whether "sub-threshold" aggression tips into open war depends largely on how the war in Ukraine ends. If Russia scores a win there, he warns, it might attempt a swift strike to seize the Suwałki Gap, the narrow corridor linking Poland to the Baltic states, sandwiched between Kaliningrad and Belarus – paired with nuclear blackmail intended to freeze the conflict before NATO can respond collectively.
Lt. Col. (ret.) Maciej Korowaj goes further, describing Russian preparations for a demonstrative nuclear detonation over the Baltic Sea, designed to be provocative without crossing into full-scale war – a strike calibrated, he says, "hard enough to test our resilience, but ambiguous enough that NATO has a problem with a conventional response." Both men fault Polish law: there is still no legal category for "hybrid war," meaning forces confronting drones or intruding helicopters must, absurdly, operate under peacetime rules.
Gen. Roman Polko, a former special-forces commander, insists Russian pilots do not stray into Polish skies by accident. "Russia goes as far as it is allowed," he says. "You have to not only set red lines but enforce them."
A public braced, but not alarmed
Polish society appears braced but divided. A recent SW Research poll found 63% of Poles believe some Russian aggression against a NATO state is possible, though only 21.5% think it would mean full invasion; in Poland's biggest cities the figure rises to 76%.
Yet a separate IBRiS survey found 77% still doubt the war will spread onto Polish soil – a gap between abstract worry and personal conviction that experts consider dangerous. Economically, the war has already cost Poland dearly: the national statistics office puts cumulative losses at nearly 115 billion euro (roughly 3.5% of GDP) from labour shocks, elevated defence spending and disrupted supply chains.
"Fort Trump" and the limits of deterrence
Into this anxious climate steps Washington's much-touted permanent military base. President Karol Nawrocki has declared the project "confirmed," suggesting it be named "Fort Trump" in honour of the American president he credits with the breakthrough. Yet Poland's own deputy defence minister, Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka, cautions that the Pentagon's broader review of US force posture in Europe will not conclude until November or December, and that the final call rests with Donald Trump alone. Officials speak of a force of 4,000-5,000 troops, part of a longer-term target of roughly 15,000 American personnel in Poland – though MOD’s deputy minister Stanisław Wziątek concedes that milestone might not be reached until 2030, or even 2039, and construction alone could cost over 15 billion zloty (about 3,5 billion euro).
Would it actually deter Moscow? The strategic logic is real: a permanently stationed American brigade, with families and infrastructure rooted in place, changes the calculus for any attacker, since a strike on Poland's east would from its first minute risk American casualties, not just Polish ones. But a base still years from completion does little to address the immediate problem: drones, helicopters and saboteurs probing Poland's defences almost weekly. Nor does it resolve the legal vacuum critics like Gen. Polko describe, or the fragmented decision-making in Warsaw itself, where a semi-ceremonial president claims credit for a project his own government must fund and build. Deterrence, ultimately, depends less on a ribbon-cutting ceremony than on whether Poland and its allies can agree, quickly, on rules for a war that has already arrived – just not yet by name.
