What Role Did Poland & The Baltic States Play In Ukraine’s Bombing Of Ust-Luga?

Some Russian sources claim that Ukrainian drones used their airspace to deter interception.

Several waves of Ukrainian drones bombed Russia’s Ust-Luga gas processing plant and oil terminal near St. Petersburg last week. Some of them went off course, however, and crashed into the three Baltic States. Although they claimed that the drones passed into their territory from Russia, some Russian sources claimed that they actually flew across Poland and the Baltic States into Russia. The implications of that would amount to even more direct NATO involvement in the conflict than there already is.

Putin had previously accused the West of helping Ukraine hit targets in universally recognized Russian territory with their missiles, referring to those within its borders prior to Crimea’s reunification in early 2014, which was already troubling enough. Now, however, the hypothesis is being floated that the West is allowing Ukrainian drones to use its airspace to deter interception by Russia en route to their targets. They’re apparently calculating that Russia won’t try to shoot them down within NATO airspace.

It’s understandable why they’d take that risk after Putin has remained remarkably restrained in the face of numerous Western-backed Ukrainian provocations like repeatedly attacking Russia’s nuclear triad and even trying to assassinate him. He’s convinced that Western decisionmakers are irrational in the sense of willing to risk World War III in response to any reciprocal Iranian-like retaliation that Russia carries out against Ukraine’s NATO patrons, ergo his reluctance to do so, yet they misinterpret that as weakness.

The West has accordingly continued pushing the perceived limit as far as possible as through the latest provocation against Ust-Luga that reportedly relied on Ukrainian drones using Polish and Baltic airspace. If that’s indeed what happened, and the Kremlin has yet to confirm whether that’s the case, then the involved countries could always claim ignorance and allege that Ukraine used their airspace without permission. That might very well be a lie in that scenario, but it’s unlikely they’d admit to allowing this.

Nevertheless, the perception by the Kremlin – let alone confirmation from the military even if it’s not announced for escalation-control purposes – that this is what happened could further shift the factional balance from the “moderates” to the “hardliners”, thus raising Putin’s interest in responding. If he agrees to escalate, then this would likely take the form of him authorizing the interception of Ukrainian drones in NATO airspace the next time that it’s used by them, not nuking NATO right away like some want.

In that event, Putin would intend to signal to NATO that a more serious escalation might follow the next incident (given his reluctance to cross the Rubicon by attacking Ukraine’s co-belligerents right away), but NATO might not take him seriously given his earlier-mentioned reluctance to do precisely that. Poland and the Baltic States might then further strengthen their military and logistical cooperation, possibly in preparation of defying Russia by letting Ukraine use their airspace yet again, thus risking a major crisis.

If Russian sources are correct about Ukrainian drones used NATO airspace, then not at least trying to intercept them there if this happens again would only embolden more and possibly even larger such provocations, but either scenario amounts to an escalation that could jeopardize the Russian-US talks. Therefore, if Trump is sincere about reaching a deal with Putin over Ukraine and a “New Détente” between their countries after that, then he must urgently ensure that this never happens again.