Russia, Poland and drones – What next for Putin and Europe?

This Is Not A Drill with Gavin Esler

Podmasters

News, Society & Culture, Politics

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

NATO jets have scrambled to shoot down Russian drones after what Polish military command has called an ‘unprecedented violation’ of its airspace. As Europe reacts to Russian aggression crossing into NATO airspace and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk invokes Article 4 of the NATO treaty, Gavin Esler is joined for the latest from Warsaw by Ian Garner, assistant professor at the Center for Totalitarian Studies at the Pilecki Institute. • This episode of This Is Not A Drill is supported by Incogni the service that keeps your private information safe, protects you from identity theft and keeps your data from being sold. There’s a special offer for This Is Not A Drill listeners – go to https://incogni.com/notadrill to get an exclusive 60% off your annual plan. • Support us on Patreon to keep This Is Not A Drill producing thought-provoking podcasts like this. Advertisers! Want to reach smart, engaged, influential people with money to spend? (Yes, they do exist). Some 3.5 MILLION people download and watch our podcasts every month – and they love our shows. Why not get YOUR brand in front of our influential listeners with podcast advertising? Contact [email protected] to find out more Written and presented by Gavin Esler. Produced by Robin Leeburn. Original theme music by Paul Hartnoll – https://www.orbitalofficial.com. Executive Producer Martin Bojtos. Managing Editor Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor Andrew Harrison. This Is Not A Drill is a Podmasters production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk says a huge number of Russian drones violated Poland's airspace,
0:15.0	as part of an attack by Russia on targets in Western Ukraine.
0:19.0	Poland, Mr. Tuss says,
0:23.0	is therefore at the closest point to open conflict since World War II.
0:26.4	Four of 19 Russian drones were reportedly shot down.
0:30.1	We'll hear an expert view on the latest from Warsaw.
0:34.2	I'm Gavin Esler, and this is not a drill.
1:07.6	Music I'm Gavin Esler and this is not a drill. A deliberate attack on a NATO nation such as Poland can be considered an attack against all of NATO under Article 5 of the organisation's charter.
1:12.9	That requires each member state to take, quote, such action as it deems necessary,
1:17.7	including the use of armed force to restore and maintain security in the North Atlantic area.
1:24.7	Now, no one is invoking Article 5 right now, but Poland is taking the incursion very, very seriously.
1:29.0	I'm joined now by Ian Garner, Assistant Professor at the Centre for Totalitarian Studies at the Pelletsky Institute in Warsaw. Ian, it's been quite a day already.
1:35.5	What do we actually know? Are the facts broadly, as I've just stated them?
1:40.2	Yeah, so you're pretty close. It looks like about 10 to maybe a dozen Russian drones crossed into Polish airspace overnight. The pole scrambled some F-35s and shot down four of those drones. We've seen drones drift from Ukrainian airspace into Polish airspace before. It's clearly not a large-scale
2:04.5	attack. The drones didn't make it anywhere close to any major cities. However, the polls are
2:11.2	certainly alarmed. And we all got in Warsaw the alert on our phone this morning saying, you know, don't approach drones.
2:19.8	There's drones out there.
2:21.2	The airspace was closed in the country.
2:23.7	So we're talking about a real threat.
2:25.5	This is something that's clearly very important.
2:28.2	And certainly for the Polish government, in addition to the direct security threat, it touches on this kind of anti-Russian sentiment in the
2:36.9	country, the anger about Russia, it touches on memory politics in the country. And so I think we'll
	...

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