WARSAW / KYIV — September 18, 2026. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told the Sejm that allied intelligence now assesses Russia is preparing “hybrid” drone and missile strikes against countries that support Ukraine — including Poland — and will brand damaging incursions as accidents to blunt any NATO Article 5 response, then flew to Kyiv on Friday to press air-defense cooperation with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Speaking Thursday in parliament, Tusk said assessments shared by NATO, Ukrainian and Polish services point to intensified Russian attacks on Ukraine and its backers over the coming months as “the most likely scenario.” He warned of a “real risk” that drones or missiles could enter eastern-flank NATO territory, cause damage, and be accompanied by an official narrative that “it was an accident” with “no reason” for anyone to consider a collective response. The aim, he argued, is to weaken Alliance cohesion and persuade members that Article 5 is “more theoretical than practical.”
Tusk was blunt about Western politics. Not every politician in the United States or Europe, he said, is focused on how to defend Poland, Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia, and some groups are “just waiting for an excuse” to declare they will not “die for Poland” or the Baltic states. The warning lands against a backdrop of stray drones, espionage and hybrid probes that have already tested what counts as an armed attack — and against repeated public doubts from President Donald Trump about automatic collective defense. For frontline capitals, that ambiguity is itself a vulnerability Russia can exploit.
The operational forecast is equally stark. Tusk called the coming autumn and winter “tragically critical” for Ukraine, predicting continuous high-intensity strikes on major cities and on warehouses, rail lines and logistics nodes that keep the defense fighting. Those attacks have already intensified in western Ukraine near the Polish border as Russia fields more jet-powered drones that Kyiv struggles to intercept — the same geography that forces Warsaw to scramble fighters and air defenses when alerts spike. Each near-miss along the frontier rehearses the political script Tusk described: damage first, deniability second, Alliance hesitation third.
Friday’s Kyiv visit turned the speech into diplomacy. Tusk met Zelenskyy to discuss Poland’s role in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Coalition, broader air and missile defense, sanctions pressure, energy cooperation and bilateral security commitments. Polish and Ukrainian officials also pointed to joint production of weapons, ammunition and defense technology as a practical answer to magazine shortages that no single capital can fill alone. For Warsaw, sitting closer to the decision table on interceptors is insurance against the “accident” scenario Tusk described; for Kyiv, every additional Polish battery and production line is winter insurance against a campaign designed to freeze cities and fracture logistics.
The strategic dilemma is familiar and newly acute. If Russia can damage a NATO member while insisting the strike was unintended, Alliance politics — not radar tracks — decide whether Article 5 is invoked. If Western leaders hesitate, Moscow learns that hybrid threshold warfare works. If they respond firmly to the first serious “accident,” deterrence may harden before winter peak. Tusk’s message to the Sejm and to Zelenskyy is the same: treat the information story as part of the attack, stock interceptors before the missiles arrive, and do not let a fabricated mishap become the pretext for abandoning the eastern flank when Ukraine’s coldest months of the war begin.
