Text | Guo Randuo
Editor | Guo Randuo
Statement: The contents of this article are written with authoritative information and personal opinions. The source and screenshots of the document have been marked at the end of the article. Please be aware of it.
In the early morning of September 10, 2025, an alarm sounded over Poland. Russia's "Shahd-136" drone crossed the NATO border and approached the key points of Eastern Europe, and NATO responded later.
This is NATO's first actual combat response to Russia. Since then, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has truly crossed the border and spread to NATO's mainland for the first time. US President Trump spoke out loud at this point in time, saying that "the real good show has just begun."
This event cannot be explained by "mistake". 11 drones entered Polish airspace at the same time, and their targets were directly aimed at Rhoshuf, the key to the throat of NATO's weapons delivery to Ukraine.
The Polish Air Force responded very quickly, and the United States F-35 and early warning system completed the interception within a few hours. Poland is not a country that fights alone. While the drone invaded, the air forces of many countries such as the Netherlands, Romania, and Italy also urgently took off for support.
The airport in eastern Poland is closed, fighter jets patrol day and night, and the air defense system is fully activated. All of this shows that NATO has already preset the "invasion script" and is only one ignition signal short of it.
Although this interception operation did not use the fifth collective defense mechanism, it sent a clearer signal: NATO no longer allows geographical boundaries to become a protective umbrella for the Russian military's "gray area operation".
Faced with this incident, the Russian Embassy in Poland hurriedly denied that "the drone came from the Russian army" and claimed that "no evidence." But the problem is - even Ukrainian President Zelensky confirmed that eight Russian-made drones did enter Polish airspace.
At the same time, the Russian army was not idle either. At the same time when fires suddenly appeared over Poland, a nuclear war exercise was completed at the Chikarovsky Air Force Base outside Moscow.
This is not a coincidence, but Russia's usual "fight while fighting" tactic. Drone raids are temptations, and nuclear exercises are deterrents, with the aim of forcing NATO to soften under pressure and even give in.
On the day the interception in Poland was exposed, Trump declared on social media that "NATO has reached the critical point and the real good show has just begun." This sentence sounds like empty words, but it is meaningful when it is said at the current point.
Trump has never been interested in NATO. During his tenure, he criticized NATO for "eating for free" and asked European countries to increase military expenditures. Now he is back on the election stage. How would he choose a NATO that has already taken action and a Europe that is fighting with Russia?
It can be foreseeable that Trump may use the Polish incident to reorganize NATO's obligations and responsibilities, and may even promote "NATO segmentation": whoever pays the money will speak. Whoever asks for trouble will be responsible. Instead of the current structure of "one person provoking, 30 countries are buried with each other".
For Europe, this is an opportunity for "strategic autonomy" and a risk of "abandonment". Can Poland, Germany and France maintain NATO's overall combat effectiveness without the US leadership? What the drone wreckage falls is not only the hardware, but also the question of NATO's future path.
The sky in eastern Poland is no stranger. Since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, this has been the core area of intelligence exchange and military aid delivery. But this time it is different. This is no longer the "foreign aid rear", but has become the "front battlefield".
At least 7 drone wrecks landed, and one missile fragment was unknown. Rzeshuf Airport is closed, Lublin is in combat readiness, and Warsaw flights are turning sharply - these are not post-war treatment, but in-war emergency response. NATO is preparing for every second “if the next wave is a missile”.
More importantly, this drone traveled accurately to hit NATO's nerve center - collective defense credibility. If NATO is indifferent this time, Russia will understand that "as long as the fight is small and scattered enough, no one is willing to stand out."
And this is exactly the strategic situation Russia wants: a small-scale, low-cost, and continuous sexual harassment that cannot trigger a collective counterattack. But Poland did not choose to remain silent. NATO did not choose to give in.
Fighter planes take off, missile interception, airport blockade, media disclosure-all this is not an "accident handling", but an active declaration on the "frontier war".
The border of Poland connects to Ukraine eastward, to Belarus northward, and to Germany westward. This drone invasion brought about not only the upgrade of Poland's combat readiness, but also the reshaping of the entire Eastern European pattern.
Belarus has long been Russia's "quasi-front". Since July 2025, Belarus has repeatedly requested security talks with Poland, but Poland has refused. After this incident, Poland will inevitably require NATO to accelerate its deployment in the eastern flank, and may even promote the establishment of a "air defense buffer zone" in western Ukraine.
Don't forget that Poland has sent all its T-72 and PT-91 tanks to Ukraine, and the MiG-29 has also been transferred to the Ukrainian Air Force. He is in a "military vacuum" state, but he still dares to intercept Russian military targets. Behind this courage is confidence in NATO's reaction and an accurate judgment of Russia's bottom line.
But this is also dangerous. Once a misjudgment is made, Russia's retaliation may no longer use drones, but missiles. Every city in Eastern Europe may become the test site for the next "warning".
This drone storm means that NATO has entered "frontier contact" from "border defense", which means that Russia's gray area operations were hit back by live bounce for the first time, and it also means that political forces such as Trump may use this as a breakthrough to promote a new NATO reshuffle.
Information source: Trump finally made a statement on the Russian drone incident. Poland: What are you saying Observer.com 2025-09-11 09:01
