Poland warns Russia may plan hybrid strikes against Ukraine’s allies

A warning from Warsaw

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned on 17 September that Russian planning may include hybrid drone and missile strikes against countries supporting Ukraine, including Poland. Speaking to parliament, he said Moscow could try to present future incidents as accidents in order to test whether NATO members would respond collectively. The warning was framed as an intelligence assessment and contingency risk, not as confirmation that a new attack on Poland had begun.

The warning followed a series of incidents close to NATO’s eastern flank. The Guardian reported that a jet-powered drone exploded near the Ukrainian-Polish border and that Polish airports temporarily suspended operations while air defences responded. British officials separately cited a drone strike on a Kyiv-Warsaw passenger train and repeated attacks on Ukrainian border crossings as evidence that the war is increasingly affecting transport, trade and civilian movement near neighbouring states.

Resilience becomes a security policy

NATO published new baseline requirements for resilience on 17 September, covering the continuity of energy, food, water, healthcare and communications during crises. The alliance said the requirements are intended to improve civil-military cooperation and help governments recover quickly from disruption. Ukrainian authorities contributed lessons from keeping critical services operating under sustained attack, linking the policy directly to the experience of the war.

The British government has also presented the wider campaign as a threat to European infrastructure and supply chains. In a statement to the OSCE, London said Russia’s attacks had intensified in scale and method, citing record missile and drone activity, damage to railways and repeated strikes near border infrastructure. That official account supports the broader security context but does not independently verify every element of Poland’s intelligence assessment.

The immediate question is whether warnings will produce stronger preventive measures without creating a cycle of escalation. Poland is reinforcing its eastern defences and seeking continued allied support, while NATO is concentrating on resilience, air defence and logistics. For Ukraine, the concern is practical: if rail links, border crossings or fuel routes are disrupted, European partners may find it harder to deliver aid during the coming winter. No NATO collective-defence procedure was triggered by the reported incidents described in the reviewed sources.