Russia’s drones are getting closer
Just after 1am on Friday the Romanian military detected numerous Russian drones flying “in the vicinity” of the country’s airspace. The drones were part of a major attack on neighbouring Ukraine, but the Romanians scrambled two F-16 fighter jets and a helicopter with orders to “engage the targets” if they crossed into their territory. The military tracked one drone on radar as it headed towards Galati, a port city on the Danube river in south-eastern Romania.
But the pilots couldn’t shoot down the drone without endangering civilians. It struck the roof of a 10-storey apartment building, starting a fire and injuring a 53-year-old woman and a 14-year-old boy, who were taken to hospital. The foreign ministry of Romania, which is a member of Nato, denounced the drone strike as a “serious and irresponsible” escalation by Russia. Nato condemned Moscow’s “recklessness” and vowed to strengthen the alliance’s defences “against all threats”.
It is unlikely the Kremlin deliberately targeted Romania. Russian forces were attacking Ukrainian infrastructure across the border in Odesa at the time and it is entirely plausible that one of the drones was knocked off course. This isn’t the first time Russian drones have crossed into Romanian territory, either: numerous drone fragments have been found in the country since the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. Last month there were reports that a drone had crashed on the outskirts of Galati.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have all triggered emergency alerts in recent weeks after Ukrainian drones bound for Russia went astray and inadvertently entered their territories. Lithuania’s president and prime minister were rushed to air raid shelters on 20 May and residents of the capital, Vilnius, were told to take cover after reports of an incoming drone. Two people in Poland, which is also a Nato member, were killed in 2022 when a Ukrainian air defence missile mis-fired during a Russian attack and hit a small farming village in the country’s east.
These apparently unintentional incursions reflect the increasing use of medium and long-range air strikes – and increasingly sophisticated electronic defences – on both sides as Russia, failing to advance on the ground, attempts to pummel Ukraine into submission from the air. Kyiv is taking the war deeper into Russian territory, targeting oil refineries and other energy-related infrastructure with its own long-range drones. Russia also appears to be probing Nato’s defences, stepping up its hybrid warfare campaign across the continent with sabotage and arson attacks that fall below the threshold of conventional war. Nato scrambled Polish and Dutch fighter jets after more than a dozen Russian drones entered Polish airspace in September 2025, shooting down several and prompting the country’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, to warn that this was “the closest we have been to open conflict since World War II”.
Nato has promised to bolster its air defences, particularly along the alliance’s eastern flank, with more air patrols and air defence systems, beginning with an operation known as Eastern Sentry, that will be anchored in Poland. But the scale of the task is considerable as the alliance struggles to adapt to the rapidly changing nature of warfare and the devastating potential of relatively cheap drones, compounded by decades of underinvestment in defence industrial capacity among major European powers, where political leaders tended to treat major inter-state wars as a relic of the previous century until the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin has long relied on fears of the conflict escalating beyond Ukraine’s borders among the country’s allies and partners to temper Western military aid to Kyiv. At regular intervals since the start of the war – and particularly after significant Russian military setbacks – he has implicitly threatened to use nuclear weapons if Russia is pushed to the brink of defeat. Russia has targeted Ukraine with nuclear-capable Oreshnik missiles at least three times since the start of the conflict, most recently on 24 May, which many analysts interpret as the Kremlin signalling its capabilities. Russia has also deployed tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus and held large-scale nuclear exercises across both countries earlier this month.
True to form, with the Russian offensive again stalled, as many as 500,000 Russian soldiers dead, the Russian economy under serious strain, and rumours swirling of a looming large-scale mobilisation, the Kremlin is once again issuing blood-curdling threats to escalate the conflict, urging European diplomats to evacuate Kyiv. On 25 May, the Russian foreign ministry warned of “systemic strikes” targeting the Ukrainian capital and told all foreign citizens to leave the city “as soon as possible”.
When the European missions refused to be cowed, insisting that they would remain in a city that has already been under concerted attack for the last four years, Russian officials stepped up their threats. “The EU has said it will maintain its diplomatic presence… despite Russia’s warnings,” the former-Russian-president-turned-social-media-provocateur Dmitry Medvedev posted on X on 26 May. “Well, apparently they’ve got diplomats to spare and need to trim the headcount.”
Russia’s threats should not be blithely discounted. The more the Russian military struggles on the battlefield, the more we should expect Putin to focus on efforts to intimidate Ukraine’s supporters, rattling his nuclear sabre and issuing more bellicose threats. This approach has worked before, when Joe Biden was in power and after Donald Trump’s return to the White House last year, with both presidents apparently convinced that if Russia was pushed too far the conflict could escalate into a new world war. At the same time, serious analysts have warned that if Russia is permitted to prevail in Ukraine, it could well be in a position to launch an attack on a member of Nato before the end of this decade, with the aim of finally dismantling the North Atlantic alliance.
The truth is, as the drone strike in Romania and Moscow’s threats to European diplomats clearly illustrate, this conflict was never confined to the borders of Ukraine. Putin has long stressed that he is waging a war against the wider West – and Nato in particular – for the future of European security. It is more than time for European leaders to acknowledge this reality. If they are fearful of the dangers of a defeated, vengeful Russia, just imagine what could follow a Russian victory.
[Further reading: As the world shifts around us, Ukraine fights on]
