When Vladimir Putin sent at least 19 drones into Poland last week, the Russian president was delivering a message: He’s not planning to end his war against the West anytime soon.

The Russian incursion into NATO airspace follows weeks of aerial attacks in Ukraine that killed dozens of civilians, damaged buildings housing the EU and British delegations and struck for the first time a government building in central Kyiv. 

Far from being ready to strike a peace deal with Ukraine under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, Putin has pegged his political survival to a simmering conflict with the United States and its allies.

“Putin is the president of war,” said Nikolai Petrov, a senior analyst at the London-based New Eurasian Strategies Center. “He has no interest in ending it.”

Having fashioned himself as a wartime leader, going back to being a peacetime president would be tantamount to a demotion. “No matter what the conditions are, he cannot give up that role,” Petrov said. 

As Putin’s full-scale assault on Ukraine drags toward its fourth year, the Russian president arguably has the most cause for optimism since the early days of the war when the Kremlin hoped to capture the country in a matter of days.

With Ukrainian forces hamstrung by a lack of weapons and manpower, Russia has been grinding deeper into the country. 

But Moscow’s progress 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 tip into recession.

And yet, politically, ending the conflict comes with risks.

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.

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 assault “could lead to the collapse of Finnish statehood — once and for all.” 

Analysts noted the article’s rhetoric resembled the Kremlin’s talking points ahead of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Moscow has also begun to shift vital industries, including shipbuilding, to the east of the country, away from its border with NATO, Petrov pointed out. On Friday, Russia began carrying out large-scale military exercises with Belarus, including just across the Polish border. The exercises are expected to conclude on Tuesday.

“Whatever Putin achieves in Ukraine, the confrontation with the West will not end there; it will continue in various forms,” said Petrov. “Including militarily.”

With actions like the incursion into Poland, Putin is issuing a warning to Trump and European leaders discussing providing security guarantees for Kyiv after a potential peace deal, said Kirill Rogov, founder of the think tank Re:Russia.

“Putin showed that he can attack NATO countries today and they have no defense systems in place,” he said.

Trump’s mixed signaling on his commitment to NATO and his unwillingness to stick to his own deadlines when it comes to imposing sanctions on Moscow give Putin the confidence that he can get away with it.

For the Russian president, “it’s now or never,” Baunov added.

Incursions like the one in Poland are intended to chip away at the Western military alliance’s commitment to collective defense, with small offensives that test NATO’s willingness to respond.

The hope, said Baunov, is to reveal the military alliance as a toothless tiger.

So far, the reaction from Washington has fed into those fears. 

On Thursday, Trump echoed Moscow’s talking points, telling reporters that “it could have been a mistake.” 

The Kremlin has dismissed accusations that the drones were a deliberate provocation. The Russian defense ministry said there “had been no plans to target facilities” in Poland. 

Belarus, which served as a launchpad for some of the drones according to Polish officials, said the incursion could have been the result of a mishap due to “electronic jamming.”

“This is typical Putin-style trolling and probing,” said Rogov. “He likes things to be ambivalent so that they can be interpreted either as deliberate or accidental.”