The Kremlin’s tight control over the media and the internet would likely allow it to sell a peace deal to most Russians as a victory. But that’s not who the Russian president will be worrying about.
With Russia’s liberal opposition decimated, a small but vocal group of nationalists now presents the biggest threat to his rule, said Petrov. And he has promised them a grandiose victory, not only over Ukraine but over what the Kremlin calls “the collective West.”
“There’s a desire among the hawkish part of the military-political establishment to destroy NATO,” Alexander Baunov, a former Russian diplomat now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, told DW’s Russian service. “To show NATO is worthless.”
Since Putin met with Trump in Alaska last month in what the U.S. president had touted as a summit dedicated to striking a ceasefire, Moscow has ramped up its campaign of hybrid warfare against Europe, according to military analysts.
Before Wednesday’s incursion, Russian drones had repeatedly ventured into Polish airspace from neighboring Belarus, circling cities before turning back. In August, a Russian drone crashed some 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 toward a NATO base before being intercepted by Dutch Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets.
