Europe on brink as Russian drones breach NATO airspace, sparking calls to arm Ukraine with long-range missiles

The Kremlin appetite for escalation is growing, but Europe remains reluctant to act decisively. In recent days, Russian drones have breached NATO’s airspace in Poland and Romania.

Without the means to repel large-scale drone swarm attacks, Europe’s best option is to give Ukraine the long-range missiles needed to strike the Russian factories that produce these weapons. The threat is escalating, and incremental steps will no longer suffice.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned Poland was at its “closest to open conflict since World War Two” after 19 Russian drones breached the country’s airspace on September 9.

"This is a confrontation that Russia has declared against the entire free world," said Tusk. The incident showed just how unprepared Europe is for the growing threat of cheap drones.

Just days earlier on September 7, Russia launched its largest aerial assault of the war, striking Kyiv with drones and missiles. Two people were killed, and a government building housing Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers was set ablaze. Ukrainian officials said Russia deployed 805 drones and decoys.

It’s a very clear sign that Vladimir Putin has no intention of stopping the war anytime soon and that he expects capitulation from Ukraine and its European allies.

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Months of US diplomacy with Moscow under the Trump administration have also achieved little.

Donald Trump insists he is always “two weeks” away from a decision, but the Kremlin calculates it can outlast Ukraine on the battlefield, fracture European unity, and sap American interest. Russia remains defiant, refusing meaningful negotiations.

As Le Monde observed, Russian diplomacy follows familiar Soviet patterns: table maximalist demands, stage symbolic talks, issue threats, then offer only token concessions. George Kennan, the American diplomat who defined early Cold War strategy, once noted that the Soviets “will ask for the moon, demand the moon, and accept nothing less.”

John Sullivan, US ambassador to Moscow from 2020 to 2022, echoed the same view, describing Russian negotiations as “maximalist demands, surrender nothing, paranoia to the nth degree.” Europe must strip away all false illusions that the war will end anytime soon.

Any sort of peace agreement that resembles the Budapest Memorandum or Minsk agreements will surely bring a much bigger war to Europe in the future. And the Trump administration has shown itself to be an unreliable ally. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, if Europe can take advantage and scale its own capabilities and European defence firms.

At the same time, Washington’s own priorities are shifting. According to POLITICO, The Pentagon’s new draft defence strategy places homeland and Western Hemisphere security above countering China or Russia.

To Trump’s credit, in just a few months he has pushed Europe to take the Russian threat more seriously than some capitals managed in three years of full-scale war.

Germany, the continent’s largest economy, had announced sweeping ambitions to rebuild its military after the invasion. But once it became clear that Ukraine would not collapse, Berlin grew complacent, and much of its investment drive – including the much-touted €100 billion “special fund” – faltered.

However, Washington’s retreat also presents Europe with a chance to take greater ownership of its security and lessen its reliance on the United States.

In our new Henry Jackson Society report, European Defence Autonomy: Identifying Key Companies and Projects to Replace U.S. Capabilities, my co-author Mykola Kuzmin and I argue that Europe now has a strategic opportunity to leverage its own European defense sector to prepare for a future war with Russia if it comes to that. It is better to be prepared than left scrambling when the moment of crisis arrives.

Europe cannot afford to rely on the US for its core defense capabilities – nor on the whims of individuals like Elon Musk, who has already shown by restricting Starlink access in Ukraine in Kherson and occupied-Crimea.

It’s true that for now, no alternative comes close to Starlink’s cost, ease of use, or coverage. Its 8,000-satellite constellation is far more than that of the French operator Eutelsat OneWeb, which has just 630 satellites. And OneWeb’s hardware is about 20 times more expensive. But this is where greater investment should be tailored to in these strategic areas to ensure that Europe can strategically fight on its own.

Russia has been overwhelming Ukrainian cities with nightly drone attacks and has flown over 530 surveillance drones across Germany this year to monitor Western arms shipments, including near Bundeswehr bases. Yet German forces cannot shoot them down due to legal limits.

If Moscow is already doing this with its hybrid war, the scale of a full-scale war will be far greater. The economics of war are quickly being transformed in Ukraine. That is why Europe must invest in low-cost drone interceptors and other scalable technologies. Relying on million-dollar American Patriot interceptor missiles for every drone attack is simply unsustainable.

Russia and China have a booming drone-alliance and the Axis of Evil is helping one another grow technologically. Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela are all gaining technologically through cooperation with one another.

Deborah Fairlamb, co-founder of Green Flag Ventures, a venture capital fund for Ukrainian startups said, “Chinese components continue to be found in downed Russian drones, and a number of Chinese nationals have been documented alongside Russian troops – indicating that tactical and technological lessons are being shared between Russia, China, and North Korea.”

The continent also has a booming defence tech sector, and I have embedded with frontline units using European technologies like the Vector drone. As the Financial Times noted, “Europe now boasts three defence start-ups with a ‘unicorn’ valuation of more than €1bn: drone makers Helsing, Quantum Systems, and Tekever.”

Lyuba Shipovich, CEO of Dignitas Ukraine highlighted that Estonia has multiple companies now working on robotics. “We don’t have many of their systems here because they’re expensive, but some are comparable to Ukrainian designs,” said Shipovich.

Estonia-based Milrem Robotics has found success in Ukraine, and its THeMIS unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) is being used on the front. Milrem’s THeMIS UGVs are proving their worth in Ukraine – so much so that Russia offered a bounty for capturing them intact.

Crucially, Europe has Ukraine on its side, which is now a global drone superpower. “What does carry undeniable value for the West, however, is the experience and insight of Ukrainian engineers,” said Vitaliy Goncharuk, CEO of A19Lab and former Chairman of the Artificial Intelligence Committee of Ukraine.

But Kyiv urgently needs more funding to scale weapons production, and Europe should focus on fully integrating Ukraine into its broader defence sector. The tempo of war is accelerating, with innovation cycles now measured in mere weeks and months. As one European diplomat put it: “The speed of innovation is so quick: It’s a six-week cycle and then it’s obsolete.”

Oleksandra Ustinova, a Ukrainian member of parliament said, “Ukraine has developed technologies under real battlefield conditions that the rest of the world will want in the next five years.”

Together with Ukraine, Europe can become an AI superpower and prepare for the future of automated warfare. But technology alone won’t decide the war, as will power is needed. The larger geopolitical stakes remain clear for the European alliance.

When Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014 and the world failed to stop the seizure of Crimea, it fractured the international order that had held for decades.

The longer Moscow wages its current war and if it secures any permanent gains, the more emboldened it will become. Russia sees itself as an empire, and empires expand.

Europe must prepare accordingly, ready to fight alone if necessary.

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David Kirichenko is a war reporter and Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.