Tusk said intelligence assessments point to possible hybrid drone and missile attacks on countries supporting Ukraine. Russia could launch “hybrid drone and missile strikes” against Poland and other NATO countries supporting Ukraine while portraying them as accidental, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has warned, citing intelligence assessments. Addressing parliament on Thursday, Tusk said such attacks could form part of a Russian effort to test NATO’s resolve and cast doubt on whether the alliance would invoke Article 5, under which an attack on one member is treated as an attack on all. “According to intelligence assessments, Russia’s plan...includes hybrid drone and missile strikes against countries supporting Ukraine, including Poland,” Tusk said. “These possibilities have been discussed for some time, but the information is now highly consistent and, unfortunately, convincing,” he added. Tusk said that this was the scenario he considered most likely for the coming months, but not the only possible outcome. He did not identify the intelligence services behind the assessment. A week earlier, however, he said he had received a detailed report directly from CIA Director John Ratcliffe about possible developments in the coming months. The Polish PM did not say whether Thursday’s warning was based on that report. Jets scrambled, air alerts issued Tusk’s warning came amid a series of Russian drone strikes close to Ukraine’s border with Poland in recent days. Polish fighter jets were scrambled on Thursday after a jet-powered Russian drone approached the frontier during an attack on western Ukraine. The drone crashed or was shot down about 4 kilometers from Poland, according to preliminary information from the Polish military. Tusk said a gas station near the Yahodyn-Dorohusk border crossing appeared to have been targeted and that a “massive explosion” had been reported. Poland’s military said there had been no violation of Polish airspace. Air raid sirens sounded in parts of eastern Poland, while flights at Lublin and Rzeszów airports were temporarily suspended as Polish military aircraft operated in the area. The incident followed Russian drone strikes in the same border area on Sunday. One drone hit the locomotive of a Kyiv-Warsaw passenger train about 2 kilometers from Poland, while another struck a gas station near the Yahodyn-Dorohusk crossing. Strikes disguised as accidents Tusk told parliament that the recent attacks close to Poland’s border were causing “particular concern” and said the public had a right to know what the most likely scenario for the coming months would be. “I want to present the public with the most likely scenario for the next few months, because it is one that envisages serious events and requires focus, seriousness and the mental readiness to face difficult tests,” he said. As part of that scenario, Tusk said Russia could deliberately send drones or missiles into NATO countries while presenting the incidents as accidental, creating uncertainty over whether they constituted acts of aggression. “In short, there is a real risk that drones or other types of missiles could enter the territory of one or several countries on the eastern flank and even cause damage, while the official narrative would be that it was an accident,” he said. Tusk said the aim would be to weaken NATO members’ willingness to respond collectively and demonstrate that Article 5 existed “only in theory rather than in practice.” A country on edge Poland, a key state on NATO’s eastern flank and one of Kyiv’s staunchest allies, has remained on heightened alert throughout Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Nearly 20 Russian drones entered Polish airspace during a large-scale attack on Ukraine in September 2025. Polish and allied aircraft shot down several of them, marking the first time NATO forces had opened fire on Russian targets since the start of the full-scale war. In July, a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile breached Polish airspace during an attack on Ukraine and crashed in a field in eastern Poland, around 80 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. No casualties were reported, but the missile, which Polish officials said was carrying a “significant amount” of explosives, left a crater about 10 meters wide. War entering ‘most critical’ phase Tusk also warned that late autumn and winter would be “the most critical period” of Russia’s war against Ukraine so far, with Moscow adopting a strategy aimed at destroying the country’s economy and logistics “on the largest possible scale.” He said assessments suggested that Russia could seek to destroy road and rail crossings on the Ukrainian side of the border and potentially target crossings in Poland or Moldova through attacks designed to appear accidental, disrupting the delivery of generators, fuel and other aid to Ukraine. Tusk said information received by Poland about recent US-Russian talks showed that Moscow was not prepared for serious negotiations over a truce or ceasefire without Ukraine’s “de facto capitulation.”
