WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Wednesday offered an ambiguous initial response to Russia’s drone incursion into Poland’s airspace, a provocative act by Moscow that has put the United States’ NATO allies in Europe on edge.
“What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform late Wednesday morning, nearly a half-day after Poland announced that several Russian drones entered its territory over the course of many hours and were shot down with help from NATO allies.
White House officials did not immediately respond to queries about Trump’s cryptic comments about the incursion. It was the first time the transatlantic alliance has confronted a potential threat in its airspace, scrambling jets to shoot the Russian drones out of the sky.
But Trump’s comment stood in sharp contrast to the strong condemnation by several European leaders and was notably less robust than that of his ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker.
“We stand by our @NATO Allies in the face of these airspace violations and will defend every inch of NATO territory,” Whitaker posted on X.
The incursion occurred as the US leader is struggling to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to engage in direct peace talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to end Russia’s more than 3-year-old war in Ukraine.
Trump spoke Wednesday with Polish President Karol Nawrocki, who was at the White House last week for talks in which the two leaders discussed expanding the US military presence i n Poland. Following the call, Nawrocki posted on X that the conversation ”confirmed the unity of our alliance.”
French President Emmanuel Macron said in an X post that he also spoke by phone with Trump about the ″worrying developments in the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, in particular following the incursion of Russian drones in Poland.″ The leaders also discussed Israel’s strikes in Qatar on Tuesday targeting Hamas’ leadership, a stunning escalation that risked upending a Trump administration-led effort at winding down the Gaza war and freeing hostages.
The US president last month held a summit with Putin in Alaska and then met with Zelensky and key European allies about finding a pathway to end the war — something that Trump vowed to get done quickly during his 2024 White House campaign.
Trump emerged from those high-level talks to announce he was arranging a Putin-Zelensky meeting and potentially a three-way summit in which he would take part. But Trump’s confidence in arranging a peace summit has fizzled as Putin has only intensified air strikes on Ukraine over the past few weeks.
After Wednesday’s incursion, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina urged Trump to move forward with new sanctions on Moscow.
“Mr. President, Congress is with you,” Graham posted on X. “We stand ready to pass legislation authorizing bone crushing new sanctions and tariffs that can be deployed at your discretion. Our goal is to empower you as you deal with this mounting threat.”
Poland said some of the drones came from Belarus, a close Moscow ally, where Russian and Belarusian troops have begun gathering for war games scheduled to start Friday. Russia’s Defense Ministry said it did not target Poland, while Belarus said it tracked some drones that “lost their course” and entered Poland because they were jammed.
But European officials did not accept Moscow’s explanation and argued the incident suggests Putin is escalating his war on Ukraine. Polish airspace has been violated many times since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but never on this scale in Poland or anywhere else in NATO territory.
“What Putin wants to do is to test us,” European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters in Brussels. “What happened in Poland is a game changer.” She added that the Russian action should result in stronger sanctions.
NATO allies swiftly held talks Wednesday on the incursion with the alliance’s 32 member states. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told Parliament that the consultations came under Article 4 of the treaty that founded NATO in 1949 in the aftermath of World War II.
Article 4, the shortest of the NATO treaty’s 14 articles and infrequently invoked, states that: “The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.”