As Russian drones repeatedly breach NATO’s eastern flank, the European Union might finally be moving toward a coordinated response. In her State of the Union speech on Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced plans to build a “drone wall” along the bloc’s eastern border. But it’s a pledge that raises as many questions as it answers about Europe’s ability to deliver.
The urgency of that promise was driven home overnight, when Poland scrambled fighter jets and shot down multiple Russian drones that crossed from Ukraine into its airspace, forcing the closure of Warsaw’s airport and prompting Prime Minister Donald Tusk to warn of serious escalation.
These incidents have been piling up. According to Poland’s deputy prime minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, there have been eight such incidents in Moldova, three in Romania, three in Lithuania, two in Latvia, and one in Bulgaria in the past year alone.
The most recent cases underline both the seriousness and unpredictability of the threat. On 28 July, a Russian drone carrying explosives crashed in a military training area near Vilnius. On 20 August, an unmanned aircraft, believed to be a Russian-made Gerbera decoy drone, exploded in rural Eastern Poland, shattering windows in several nearby homes.
Whether deliberate provocations or the result of technical malfunctions, the reality is the same: European countries are ill-equipped to respond. The EU's commissioner for defence and space, Andrius Kubilius, admitted as much following the drone crash in Lithuania back in July. Speaking on national broadcaster LRT, he warned: “Whether Lithuania is ready to defend itself against such drones, and whether it has the necessary capabilities, remains an unanswered question,” adding that border fences alone are insufficient and must be backed by coordinated drone defences to secure the EU’s eastern frontier.
That vulnerability is already being tested. General Dariusz Malinowski, deputy commander of Poland's Armed Forces Operational Command, noted that one drone slipped through undetected before exploding on Polish soil in August. Such gaps in detection and interception underscore the fragility of Europe’s defences, as well as the urgency of a collective response Moscow is clearly probing.
Drones emerge as Moscow’s latest tool of hybrid war
Russia’s hybrid warfare against European targets is nothing new. For the better part of a decade, the Kremlin has conducted sabotage and subversion campaigns across Europe to complement its conventional aggression in Ukraine.
From cyberattacks and the jamming of GPS signals to the damaging of undersea cables, Russia has long drawn on its full hybrid playbook to weaken the West. Now, drones have been added to this arsenal as a cheap, scalable, and highly disruptive tool. They are inexpensive to produce in large numbers, difficult to detect, and capable of damaging multi-million-euro weapons systems or paralysing entire civilian infrastructures.
And nothing suggests Moscow intends to scale back these tactics, despite ongoing talks on a potential peace deal with Kyiv. The upcoming joint Russian-Belarusian military exercise 'Zapad 2025’ could well provide the Kremlin with further excuses to stage more incursions.
Building the “drone wall”
Recognising the danger, frontline states have already been working on countermeasures. One of these, put forward by the Baltic nations and their industrial champions, is the concept of a “drone wall”— a coordinated system leveraging artificial intelligence, surveillance, air defence, and counter-drone technologies.
In practice, a drone wall would integrate border-spanning sensors and jamming systems with rapid-response interception units, ensuring hostile drones can be tracked and neutralised before reaching critical infrastructure or population centres.
The initiative has gained support from several regional partners, including Poland, Norway and Finland. Until Ursula von der Leyen’s comments this morning, the EU had refused to support the project, rejecting an Estonian-led funding request in April.
Regional decisionmakers had already indicated they would proceed with the plans irrespective of EU support. The challenge now is whether Brussels can provide the sustained financial and logistical backing to turn Von der Leyen’s pledge into reality.
EU funding to secure the future of European defence
Instruments such as Security Action for Europe and the proposed European Competitiveness Fund should channel support not only to physical defences like the Polish Eastern Shield, but also to closing the critical surveillance and counter-drone gaps that the drone wall is designed to address. For the longer term, the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) should earmark funds for building Europe’s drone resilience.
Investing in the drone wall is an investment in the resilience of Europe. Every euro spent strengthening our defences to the East reduces the risk of escalation, protects European infrastructure, and strengthens deterrence where it is most urgently needed. It also represents an opportunity to build and scale a mature, cutting-edge regional defence ecosystem at a time when Europe is seeking to become more innovative and competitive.
Europe’s top priority must be to continue to support Ukraine and draw lessons from the conflict raging there, but the recent wave of drone intrusions is a reminder that Russia’s ongoing war also poses a very real and direct threat to European and NATO countries.
By backing joint frontline initiatives like the drone wall, the EU can move from reacting to Moscow’s provocations to actively shaping the continent’s defence against the next phase of hybrid operations.
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