Russia’s drone
incursion in Poland demands a U.S. response
If
President Donald Trump won’t punish Russia’s latest provocation, Congress must.
September 10, 2025
An accident or an attack?
That is the question being asked after Russian and
Belarusian drones breached Polish airspace 19 times between
11:30 p.m. Tuesday and 6:30 a.m. Wednesday. The Russian government denied,
preposterously, that some of the drones were even Russian, and the Belarusian
regime, which is closely allied with the Kremlin, blamed Ukraine for driving
the drones off course. But Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said, “Our assessment is
that they did not veer off course but were deliberately targeted.”
Whatever the case, NATO air defenses shot down the drones,
which were identified as the Gerbera type used for reconnaissance or as decoys.
Some experts believe this was a deliberate Russian provocation, probing Polish air
defenses and assessing the speed and efficiency of the NATO response.
The hypothesis that this was more than a mere accident is
buttressed by the pattern of Russian military activity in Ukraine since the failed summit in Alaska on Aug. 15
between Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump. That meeting enhanced
Putin’s international legitimacy and persuaded Trump to retreat, at least
temporarily, from his threats of sanctions. Though Trump claimed that the
summit was a step toward peace, Putin seems to have read it as a signal to ramp
up his aggression.
Consider what Russian forces have been doing since the
summit. On Aug. 21, as part of a massive drone-and-missile attack on Ukraine,
one of the targets hit was an American-owned electronics factory in western Ukraine,
far from the battlefront. On Aug. 28, another Russian attack killed at least 23
people and damaged the offices of the European Union
and the British Council in Kyiv. On Sunday, Russia staged its largest air
attack to date, hurling 800 drones and 13 missiles at Ukraine and
damaging the main government building in Kyiv for the first time. On Tuesday,
another Russian strike — this time with a massive glide bomb — hit a village in
eastern Ukraine, killing at least 25 people, many of them elderly
residents waiting in line to collect their pensions.
Putin’s own words make clear the intent behind these
attacks. The Russian dictator seems convinced of three important points. First,
he believes that Russia is winning the war, even though its troops are
advancing at a slower rate than the armies on the
Western Front during World War I. “The Ukrainian armed forces are increasingly
running out of reserves, with combat-ready units staffed at no more than 47
[to] 48 percent,” Putin said at a news conference last Wednesday. “The
situation for them is already at a most critical point.”
Believing this, Putin might be stepping up drone and
missile attacks in the conviction that doing so will dangerously deplete
Ukraine’s air defenses and undermine its will to resist. Ukrainians’
determination to keep fighting remains strong, but there is no question that
their air defenses are running short, in part because Trump’s Defense
Department has slowed the shipment of air-defense
munitions. The result is a growing body count from Russian drone and missile
strikes.
Second, Putin is aggravated by European efforts to aid
Ukraine, with European countries even discussing the possibility of dispatching peacekeeping forces in the
event of a peace agreement. “If any troops appear there, especially now, during
the course of hostilities, we assume that they will be legitimate targets for
destruction,” Putin threatened last week. The drone
incursion into Poland and the damage to the European buildings in Kyiv might
well be intended as a small taste of what NATO countries can expect if they
dare send troops to Ukraine under any circumstances.
And third, Putin is not worried about Trump’s reaction,
even though the U.S. president regularly wrings his hands over Russian
atrocities. This was Trump’s response online Wednesday to the
latest Russian transgression: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace
with drones? Here we go!” Here we go? That is not a message
designed to get Putin’s attention. Putin has failed to agree to either a
ceasefire or a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — Trump has
demanded both — and he has paid no real price for his recalcitrance. Little wonder
that he treats Trump with contempt, barely veiled by rote flattery.
Trump keeps threatening to impose sanctions on Russia and
then not delivering. He did impose 50 percent tariffs on India, ostensibly for
buying Russian energy, but Trump seems upset that Prime Minister Narendra Modi
hasn’t endorsed his campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize. Trump suggested that the
European Union impose massive tariffs of its own on
India and China, but that would significantly disrupt the global economy while
imposing, at best, indirect costs on Russia. Why doesn’t Trump just use his
authority to tighten sanctions on Russia or support legislation in Congress to do
so?
Congress doesn’t have to wait for Trump to act. Legislators
can take the initiative, as they did in 2017, when Congress passed a sanctions package on Russia by a
veto-proof majority, forcing a reluctant Trump to sign it. Today, lawmakers can
pass new funding for weapons for Ukraine, especially air-defense munitions to
protect Ukrainian cities and long-range missiles to target Russia’s energy facilities
and military manufacturing infrastructure. Congress can also pass legislation
to punish Russia economically for its aggression.
In the Senate, a bill sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham
(R-South Carolina) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), which has 82
co-sponsors, would punish not just India but also China and other countries
with sky-high tariffs for buying Russian oil and gas. That seems like a blunderbuss
approach, but there are more targeted alternatives available. In the House, for
example, the Financial Services Committee has passed legislation sponsored by
Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa) strengthening sanctions on foreign banks
that do business with Russia’s energy sector and expediting the process of
transferring as much as $50 billion in frozen Russian assets to Ukraine.
The United States cannot afford to stand idly by while
Putin ramps up his aggression against not only Ukraine but also its NATO
neighbors. If Trump won’t act, Congress — an equal branch of government, after
all — must step in. Otherwise, Putin’s “special military operation” will grow
only more deadly, destructive and destabilizing.
