Yes, But Whose Drones Were They?

Sept. 17—Polish leaders have rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s effort to cool down the hysteria around the alleged Russian drone incursion into Poland on Sept. 10. “It could have been a mistake,” Trump told reporters the following day. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk disagreed on X today: “We would also wish that the drone attack on Poland was a mistake. But it wasn’t. And we know it,” reported Reuters.

Earlier on Sept. 12, Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk also commented on Trump’s remark. “I think this is a message that should reach President Trump today: there’s no question of a mistake—this was a deliberate Russian attack,” he told local TV broadcaster Polsat News. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who was to visit Kyiv on Sept. 12, also responded to Trump’s words. “On the night that 19 Russian drones crossed into Poland, 400 (drones) plus 40 missiles crossed into Ukraine. These were not mistakes,” he said in a video posted on X.

But was it really a Russian attack? The blogger Simplicius points to several pieces of evidence that call into question the Polish narrative. “There were several signs pointing to the ‘false flag’ explanation, for instance a photo of a Russian drone that landed on a Polish ‘chicken coop’ that shows the drone taped together with literal duct tape,” he wrote.

The duct tape detail “is important because Ukraine was known to have been collecting previously downed Russian drones in order to ‘creatively’ reuse them for such a purpose. So, a previously destroyed or damaged drone could perhaps need some ‘work’ to make it look whole for the ‘presentation,’” he says. “Additionally, Polish homes presented as ‘destroyed’ by Russian drones were outed by citizens as houses that were damaged long ago by natural disasters.” He also cites a warning from two days before the attack which predicted Ukraine was getting ready for a big drone-related “provocation.”

The intent behind all this is obvious, Simplicius says: “another desperate ploy from[NATO's Ukranian dictator Volodymyr] Zelenskyy to get NATO involved, even if in small stepwise fashion. The latter almost worked, as Poland made some performative fuss about invoking NATO’s ‘Article Four’ on ‘consultations.’”