Kurt Volker on NATO response to the downed Russian drones over Poland : NPR
Police and the army come together to inspect a house destroyed by debris from a Russian drone shot dead in the village of Wyryki-Wola, Oriental, Poland, September 10.
Wojtek Radwanski/ /AFP via Getty Images
hide
tilting legend
Wojtek Radwanski/ /AFP via Getty Images
The Russian drones entering Polish airspace were “an intentional act” intended to test the American and NATO allies and send a “warning,” said Kurt Volker, a former American ambassador to NATO.
“You do not have this number of drones and this distance in Poland without it being deliberated by the Russian party,” said Volker, who was NATO ambassador under former president George W. Bush, in an interview with an interview Morning edition.
NATO fighter planes shot down several Russian drones on Wednesday after entering Polish airspace near the country’s eastern border with Ukraine. European officials have described the law as a deliberate provocation by Russia. It was the first time in the history of NATO that alliance fighter planes brought enemy targets in allied airspace.
European and NATO leaders have condemned the incident as one of the most serious climbing in Moscow since its invasion of Ukraine. Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn., The best democrat of the senatorial foreign relations committee, said on CNN that he had not been informed of the news, but he would be “incredibly serious if there were Russian air workers on a NATO country”, adding “probably not intelligent for me to engage in speculations before having a decrease on this subject”.
President Donald Trump plans to speak with Polish President Karol Nawrocki on Thursday, according to a White House official who spoke under the cover of anonymity before the call.
NATO and Polish officials said they were waiting for the results of a military assessment before deciding how to react. We still don’t know how many drones have been involved.
Polish authorities said Thursday that they had found wrecks of at least nine drones near the border with Ukraine. Rob Schmitz de NPR reports that drones were “like Shahed” models, similar to what Russia used in attacks on Ukrainian cities, and seemed to be unarmed lures intended to confuse the air defenses.
The last incident prompted Poland to invoke Article 4 of the NATO Treaty, which calls for consultations between the allies. The Kremlin has given changing explanations, suggesting that interference can have caused an accident and deny Russian drones could reach Poland, an assertion that is not true.
In 2022, two civilians were killed when a Ukrainian air defense missile, fired to intercept a Russian strike, hit a village near the border.
In a conversation with Michel Martin of NPR, Volker said that the drone’s incident was Russia testing NATO’s determination and had raised wider questions about how the alliance should react.
This interview is slightly modified for length and clarity.
Strengths of the interview
Michel Martin: Based on what you know now, do you consider this as an intentional act? Does war in Ukraine spread in another country?
Kurt Volker: Well, two different questions there. It is definitively an intentional act. You do not have this number of drones and this distance in Poland without it being deliberate by the Russian part, and I think it was both to test to see how we react, and also to send a warning. But does war spread to Poland? Not yet. I think it is Russia’s test and try to make us back up the support of Ukraine, and perhaps a warning that if we do not do it, then war could manage.
Martin:: Poland invoked article 4 of the NATO Treaty, calling for a joint consultation with allies. To what extent is this consultation significant?
Volker: Well, it’s a step. It is not a big step, to be perfectly honest. We have NATO meetings every day, but we put a label on it and say, OK, it is now officially a consultation of article 4, which, in a sense, says that a country feels a threat of particular security, it wants to discuss it with allies, and that could lead to a kind of NATO response. Not necessarily to war, which would be more under article 5, but a response of a certain kind.
Martin: So do you think that what happened responds to the threshold to invoke article 5, which, as we have just heard, would arouse a response from NATO allies?
Volker: I do not think that it reaches the threshold of an answer of article 5, that is to say to attack Russia or to go against the Russian military forces. But what I think there should be NATO is a proportionate and strong response to show Putin that he will no longer be able to start again. My advice would be to create an air defense zone extended beyond NATO territory – Say, 100 or 200 kilometers – in cooperation with Ukraine. Let’s say that NATO will help the police to ensure that there are no threats that could really reach NATO populations.
Martin: Forgive me if I ask you to speculate. But do you think there is an appetite for that?
Volker: No, but I think that if we do not do something like that to show a little direct response and proportionate to this [Vladimir] Putin did, he has now established a new reference base for a lack of response from NATO.
Martin: I take your point of view as these, and also Rob Schmitz reportthat these are dummy drones. The whole is to test. So what do you think that Russian president Vladimir Putin is watching in terms of NATO reaction?
Volker: Well, I think the first thing he looks at was what happened the night of: Have we killed them, or have we not killed them? As you have pointed out, this is the first time that we have done so. This is not the first time that Russian drones or missiles have been going through an allying territory, but they have not come for a long time, and therefore NATO has not responded in these cases. This time we did. It’s a good sign. Second, we were able to get new from drones. We do not know how many others have been able to pass. This can come out in the coming military assessment. But ultimately, it was a deliberate act of Russia to violate NATO territory, and we did not know that they were unarmed drones. It is good that they were, but they could have been armed, and they could have threatened the populations of NATO in Poland. There should therefore be a strong NATO response to say that it should never happen again. And so far, I think Putin is still waiting to see: is there a strong answer or not?
