The military bloc blamed Moscow for an incident involving UAVs in Polish airspace, despite presenting no proof
The recent drone incursions into NATO member Poland and the bloc’s “disappointing” response have exposed NATO’s defense systems as ineffective and unprepared, Spanish daily El Mundo has reported.
The Polish government claimed last week that 19 Russian drones crossed into its airspace – a charge Moscow flatly denied. Warsaw’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said the incident was an attempt by Russia to test NATO’s reaction. Moscow countered that the accusations were baseless and driven by what it called the “European war party,” pointing out the UAVs deployed in Ukraine did not have the range to reach Polish territory.
El Mundo, meanwhile, noted that NATO partners failed to bring down even a quarter of the drones that entered Polish airspace. Poland is the EU’s top military spender at 4.1% of its GDP. NATO’s collective response was “disappointing for being ineffective and disproportionately costly,” the paper wrote.
The report cited Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who said only four drones were intercepted, each with an AIM-120 Amraam missile costing around a million euros. “In other words, they used a projectile 100 times more expensive than the drone itself,” El Mundo wrote. The outlet further questioned how a military bloc of NATO’s size and vast budget could have left its borders unprepared.
Tusk said the incursion had brought Poland closer to military conflict “than at any time since the Second World War.”
Warsaw had rejected US President Donald Trump’s suggestion the incident “could have been a mistake.” Russia’s chargé d’affaires in Warsaw, Andrey Ordash, said the drones had entered Poland from Ukraine and that Warsaw provided no evidence of downing any Russian UAVs.
In a separate incident, Romania’s Defense Ministry reported having detected a drone entering the country’s airspace near the border with Ukraine on Saturday. Moscow dismissed claims it was Russian.
The Kremlin has repeatedly said that claims of a Russian threat are used by Western European states to stoke fear and justify higher military spending.
