This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchelor. I welcome my colleague Judy Dempsey, a senior scholar for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Judy is in Berlin, observing events of these last days to do with the large picture called a drone wall. The emergency meeting that happened

in these last days between nations that are threatened by what appear to be Russian probes using

drones, surveillance drones so far to my knowledge, randomly or with a map that I cannot solve.

We've had reports from Poland, of course, that began the story,

but we've had reports from as deep in as Denmark, also along the Finnish frontier.

There have been warplanes flying near to the A-DIS, the identification zone of Romania and also the United

States, Alaska. It's not clear that this is one pattern that we can solve or whether there's

more to come, but the European allies, some of them, have met to talk about it.

Is this the beginning of a European military presence quite independent of the U.S.?

Because I note in no reporting that I've read was the U.S. president at this meeting.

I'm sure they had ears there, but not a major leadership, which has been the contention for some years now. Judy,

a very good day to you. Is the drone story, is that a dominant story in Berlin or is it subheading?

Good evening to you. Good evening, John, and thanks for having me on your show. It's a big story here.

It's a big story in a lot of the North European capitals

and the Eastern European members of NATO and the EU capitals, definitely.

And the question is, is this escalation by Russia?

Curiously, none of them want to explicitly name Russia,

but they clearly do suspect and they might as well say it is Russia.

Russia's testing NATO readiness, Russia's testing the security readiness of the countries that are sending the drones over.

And actually it's quite dangerous because if there's an accident, leaving that aside,

it's dangerous for another reason. This is about Russia testing European security and defense.

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