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Tusk warned of drone and rocket strikes on Poland the day before joining the summit at Bukovel
Poland's prime minister says Moscow is planning hybrid strikes with drones or rockets on Ukraine's European backers. A day later he sat down with seven neighbours in a new bloc whose agenda is energy, logistics and border trade.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- The inaugural Carpathian Eight summit brought together Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria and Hungary, with the European Union also involved.
- Hungary, Serbia and Slovakia have refused to provide Kyiv with direct military assistance, while Poland and Romania have been staunch supporters of Ukraine.
- Von der Leyen said on Wednesday that the EU needs a NATO-like mechanism to respond to hybrid attacks blamed on Russia.
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Why it matters
- constraint With 37.5% of the bloc unwilling to arm Kyiv, the only items all eight can jointly commit to are the civilian ones on Zelenskyy's list, and anything defensive stays with NATO and the EU.
- contradiction Tusk says Moscow is planning drone or rocket strikes on Ukraine's backers; Putin says such claims exist to justify Western defense budgets. Anyone siting plant or freight in the region has to weigh two claims that contradict each other.
- exposure Putin's warning that retaliation need not come where ships were seized puts operators far from the detention sites inside the range of a response, including shippers with no Russian cargo.
- decision The EU now has to define what an incident below armed aggression triggers, because a mechanism without a threshold leaves each member answering drone incursions alone.
Three of the eight governments in the room refuse to give Kyiv direct military assistance [4]. That is 37.5% of the membership [1], and it sets the ceiling on what the format can sign. Of the five workstreams Zelenskyy listed, only one is security; energy, logistics, cross-border economic ties and support for local communities are civilian [6][3].
Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram that the summit was a "significant beginning" of a movement intended to "further strengthen ties between our countries and create another strong element of cooperation at the EU level" [5]. The venue was a ski resort, Bukovel, in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of western Ukraine [3].
Tusk gave his warning on Thursday, before he left for Ukraine, saying Moscow is planning hybrid strikes with drones or rockets on European countries supporting Kyiv, Poland among them [7]. Poland is one of the eight [2]. Overnight Russian strikes in multiple Ukrainian regions sparked fires and caused several deaths and injuries before the leaders sat down [1].
Officials in Poland, Germany and Denmark have in recent weeks accused Russia of drone incursions, sabotage, arson, surveillance of defense facilities and planning to use a drone carrying explosives to attack an airport [8]. Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday that the EU needs a NATO-like mechanism to respond to hybrid attacks blamed on Russia, and to develop "a consensus on how to respond to certain incidents ... that fall below armed aggression but clearly threaten our national security" [9].
Putin, speaking to a government commission on new weapons, said Western claims about Russia's purported aggressive plans were meant to justify higher defense spending, and denied any hostile intentions toward Europe [10]. "Let's live in peace, otherwise we will be forced to respond in kind - it must be quite obvious to everyone," he said [11]. Last month he called Western seizures of Russian commercial vessels "piracy" and warned that a response would not necessarily come in the waters where the ships were taken [12]. France and the United Kingdom have detained tankers suspected of belonging to the shadow fleet, and the EU has sanctioned hundreds of those ships [13]. Russia has started deploying warships to escort its commercial vessels [15]. Russia's Foreign Ministry also summoned the British Charge d'Affaires on Friday to protest what it called the UK's "fiercely confrontational stance" [16].
Fortune did not report insurance premiums or freight rates, so the cost of Tusk's warning to anyone operating in the region goes unmeasured. Meanwhile US-mediated efforts to end the 4 1/2-year invasion have stalled over territorial concessions in eastern Ukraine and Kyiv's demand for security guarantees [17]. And three days of voting began in Russia's first wartime parliamentary election, with virtually no opposition to Putin's party [18].
In my view the durable output of this format is grid and rail, because interconnection and border logistics are the only items all eight can put their names to [4][6]. The counter-thesis: a bloc containing Hungary, Serbia and Slovakia gives those three a seat next to Kyiv without asking them for weapons [4]. Kyiv's gain is the meeting itself. A joint text signed by all eight with an air-defense or force-commitment clause would prove the first reading wrong.
What to watch
- Whether von der Leyen's proposed hybrid-response mechanism reaches a legal text with a defined trigger for incidents below armed aggression.
- Whether the Carpathian Eight publishes a joint document all eight sign, and whether it contains any defense commitment.
- Whether a further French or British tanker detention meets the Russian warships now escorting commercial vessels.