When the Russian President Vladimir Putin He sent at least 19 drones to Poland last week, sent a message: that he did not intend to end his war against the West soon, Politico notes in his analysis. Russian invasion of NATO airspace comes after intense attacks on Ukrainewhich caused the deaths of dozens of civilians, destroyed buildings that housed the EU and Britain delegations and hit a government building in downtown Kiev for the first time.

Away from being ready to conclude a peace deal with Ukraine under the pressure of US President Donald TrumpPutin has linked his political survival to an underlying conflict with the US and their allies. “Putin is the president of the war,” said Nikolai Petros, a senior analyst at the New Eurasian Strategies Center based in London. “It’s no interest in ending him.” Having shaped himself as a leader in times of war, his return to the role of president in times of peace would be equivalent to relegating his role. “Regardless of the circumstances, he cannot abandon this role,” Petrov said.

As Putin’s War in Ukraine is approaching his fourth year, the Russian president probably has more reasons to be optimistic from the early days of the war, when the Kremlin was hoping to occupy the country in a few days.

With Ukrainian forces being weakened by lack of weapons and human resources, the Russia It is increasingly deeper into Ukraine. However, the advance of Moscow is slow and comes at high cost. The Kremlin forces have suffered about a million losses, and the conflict has burdened the Russian economy, which is in danger of being a recession.

From a political point of view, however, the end of the war poses risks, Politico points out.

Strictly control of the Kremlin on the media and the internet will probably allow him to present a peace agreement to most Russians as a victory. But it is not what will concern the Russian president.

With Russia’s liberal opposition decimated, a small but loud nationalist group is now the biggest threat to his power, Petrov said. And they have promised them a grand victory, not only over Ukraine, but also on what the Kremlin calls “the collective western world”.

“There is a desire among the hard-core members of the military-political establishment to destroy NATO,” said Alexander Bunov, a former Russian diplomat and a senior researcher at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “They want to show that NATO is useless.”

By the Putin’s meeting with Trump in Alaska Last month, which the US president had described as a summit dedicated to a ceasefire, Moscow has intensified the hybrid war campaign against Europe, according to military analysts.

Prior to Wednesday’s invasion, Russian drones had repeatedly entered the Polish airspace from neighboring Belarus. In August, a Russian drone crashed about 100 kilometers southwest of Warsaw.

According to Welt, five of the drones that invaded Poland followed a straight path to a NATO base before being intercepted by F-35.

In an opinion article two days before the drones crosses Poland’s borders, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, accused Helsinki of planning an attack, threatening that any attack “could lead to a collapse of the Finnish state”. Analysts noted that the article’s rhetoric looked like the Kremlin’s arguments before Russia’s complete invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Moscow has also begun to transport vital sectors, such as shipbuilding, to the east of the country, away from the NATO border, as Petrov pointed out. On Friday, Russia began to conduct large -scale military exercises with Belarus, including just opposite the Polish border. Exercises are expected to be completed on Tuesday.

“Whatever Putin succeeds in Ukraine, the confrontation with the West will not end there. It will continue in various forms, “Petrov said. “Including the military”.

With actions such as the invasion of Poland, Putin sends a warning to Trump and European leaders who are discussing security guarantees in Kiev after a possible peace deal, said Kuril Rogov, founder of Think Tank Re: Russia. “Putin has shown that he can attack NATO countries today and that they do not have defense systems,” he said.

Trump’s contradictory statements about his commitment to NATO and his reluctance to keep his own deadlines for imposing sanctions on Moscow give Putin the confidence that he can do whatever he wants. For the Russian president, “it is now or never,” Baunov added.

Introductions such as the one in Poland are aimed at undermining the commitment of the Western Military Alliance for collective defense, with minor attacks testing NATO’s willingness to respond. Hope, Baunov said, is to appear the military alliance as powerless. So far, Washington’s reaction has reinforced these fears.

On Thursday, Trump used Moscow’s argumentstelling reporters that the invasion of Russian drones into Poland’s airspace “could have been wrong”.

Belarus, which according to Polish officials was the basis for some of the drones, said the invasion could have been the result of an “electronic interference” accident.

“This is Putin’s typical tactic, where it causes and explores situations,” Rogov noted. “He likes doubtful actions, which are interpreted either as deliberate or as accidental.”