Tusk Warns Russia May Stage 'Accidental' Drone Strikes on NATO Soil

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told parliament on Thursday that Russia is preparing hybrid attacks involving drones or rockets against European countries that support Ukraine, Poland among them, and intends to present any such strike as an accident.

In his address to lawmakers, Tusk said the aim would be to "paralyze or at least weaken the motivation of NATO countries" to come to the defence of whichever member state is hit. He warned of a real risk that drones or other projectiles could enter the territory of one or more eastern-flank countries and cause destruction, with the official account afterwards being that no response from the alliance was warranted.

Tusk said the threat is compounded by Russia's growing use of jet-powered drones, which fly higher and faster and are therefore harder for air defences to detect before they reach their targets.

He has issued repeated warnings in recent months about a possible more serious hybrid attack on a NATO member, and said his statements have become more specific as intelligence has arrived from NATO, Ukrainian and U.S. services, including the CIA.

In recent days, Tusk has said Moscow is now concentrating on striking border crossings between Ukraine and its European neighbours to disrupt supply lines. Four such incidents occurred on Poland's border with Ukraine over the past week, with several others in recent weeks on Ukraine's frontier with Moldova.

On the prospects for peace, Tusk said Russia is not ready for talks "without the total capitulation of Ukraine," and that Moscow believes winter will be critically difficult for Kyiv. He noted that Poland stepped in with deliveries last winter when Ukraine's energy infrastructure was attacked, but warned that such help would be far harder to provide if border crossings are destroyed. Russia's objective, he said, is to damage Ukraine's economy and logistics as much as possible, and intelligence points to sustained attacks of very high frequency and intensity on six main Ukrainian cities in the near future.

Tusk said he would travel to Ukraine overnight into Friday, an unusual public disclosure of a trip normally kept secret for security reasons. The announcement followed a drone strike near the Polish-Ukrainian border on Sunday that European leaders narrowly escaped. In Kyiv, he said, he would discuss with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy how to defend against the new types of drones, and hold talks with partners including Slovakia on further sanctions against Russia.

Separately, U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that "major progress is being made toward establishing a U.S. Army base in Poland," after a U.S. delegation visited several possible sites last week. Trump said the location would be announced very soon if the plan goes ahead, calling it a historic step for the U.S.-Polish alliance.

Poland has sought a permanent U.S. base for years as a security guarantee against the rising Russian threat. Its high defence spending and large U.S. arms purchases have led the Trump administration to weigh such a base even as it reorganises and reduces its overall military presence in Europe. In May, Washington unexpectedly pulled troops from the roughly 10,000 stationed in Poland, unsettling European allies and alarming Warsaw, though officials on both sides later described the withdrawal as temporary and said Poland was not expected to be affected by the troop reorganisation.