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The Russian president has linked his political survival to a continued confrontation with America and its allies.
When Vladimir Putin sent at least 19 drones to Poland last week, the Russian president was sending a message: He has no plans to end his war against the West anytime soon. The Russian incursion into NATO airspace comes after weeks of airstrikes in Ukraine that killed dozens of civilians, damaged buildings housing the EU and British delegations and hit a government building in central Kiev for the first time.
Far from being willing to reach a peace deal with Ukraine under pressure from US President Donald Trump, Putin has tied his political survival to a fiery conflict with the United States and its allies.
“Putin is the president of the war. He has no interest in ending it ,” said Nikolai Petrov, a senior analyst at the London-based Center for New Eurasian Strategies.
Having modeled himself as a wartime leader, returning to the role of president in peacetime would be tantamount to a demotion.
"Regardless of the conditions, he cannot give up that role ," Petrov said.
As Putin's full-scale assault on Ukraine approaches its fourth year, the Russian president perhaps has more reason for optimism than in the early days of the war, when the Kremlin hoped to conquer the country within days.
With Ukrainian forces limited by a lack of weapons and manpower, Russia has been pushing deeper into the country. But Moscow's advance has been slow and costly. The Kremlin's armed forces have suffered an estimated one million casualties, and the conflict has taken its toll on the Russian economy, which threatens to slide into recession.
And yet, politically, ending the conflict comes with risks. The Kremlin's tight control over the media and the internet is likely to allow it to sell a peace deal to most Russians as a victory. But that's not what the Russian president will be worried about.
With Russia's liberal opposition shattered, a small but vocal group of nationalists now poses the biggest threat to his rule, Petrov said. And he has promised them a resounding victory, not just over Ukraine but also over what the Kremlin calls the "collective West."
" There is a desire among the aggressive part of the military-political establishment to destroy NATO. To show that NATO is worthless ," Alexander Baunov, a former Russian diplomat and now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia-Eurasia Center, told DW's Russian service.
Since Putin met with Trump in Alaska last month, in what the US president had described as a summit dedicated to achieving a ceasefire, Moscow has intensified its hybrid warfare campaign against Europe, according to military analysts.
Before Wednesday's intervention, Russian drones had repeatedly entered Polish airspace from neighboring Belarus, circling cities before turning back. In August, a Russian drone was shot down about 100 kilometers southwest of Warsaw.
According to WELT, a sister publication of POLITICO in the Axel Springer Group, five of the drones that crossed into Poland were on a direct flight path to a NATO base before being intercepted by Dutch Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets.
In an opinion piece published two days before the drones crossed into Poland, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, accused Helsinki of planning an attack, threatening that any attack "could lead to the collapse of Finnish statehood - once and for all."
Analysts noted that the article's rhetoric resembled the Kremlin's talking points before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Moscow has also begun moving vital industries, including shipbuilding, to the east of the country, away from its NATO border, Petrov noted. On Friday, Russia began large-scale military exercises with Belarus, including ones across the Polish border. The drills are expected to end on Tuesday.
" Whatever Putin achieves in Ukraine, the confrontation with the West will not end here; it will continue in various forms. Including militarily ," Petrov said.
With actions like the intervention in Poland, Putin is issuing a warning to Trump and European leaders who are discussing providing security guarantees to Kiev after a possible peace deal, said Kirill Rogov, founder of the research organization Re:Russia.
" Putin showed that he can attack NATO countries today and they have no defense systems ," he added.
Trump's mixed signals on his commitment to NATO and his unwillingness to stick to his own deadlines when it comes to imposing sanctions on Moscow give Putin confidence that he can pull it off.
For the Russian president, it's now or never, Baunov added. Attacks like the one in Poland are intended to weaken the Western military alliance's commitment to collective defense, with small-scale offensives testing NATO's readiness to respond.
The hope, Baunov said, is that the military alliance will be revealed as a toothless tiger. So far, the reaction from Washington has fed these fears.
On Thursday, Trump reiterated Moscow's talking points, telling reporters it may have been a mistake.
The Kremlin has rejected accusations that the drones were a deliberate provocation. The Russian Defense Ministry said there were no plans to target facilities in Poland.
Belarus, which served as a launch point for some of the drones according to Polish officials, said the incursion may have been the result of an accident due to electronic jamming.
“This is a typical Putin-style mockery and investigation. He likes things to be ambivalent so that they can be interpreted as either intentional or accidental ,” Rogov said. / Adapted from “Pamphlet” by “Politico”
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