"NATO May Hit Drone Launch Sites In Belarus"

• 19.09.2025, 12:22

The Alliance must have a plan to respond.

This was told to the website Charter97.org by the leader of the civil campaign "European Belarus" Andrei Sannikov, commenting on the Russian drone attack on Poland, which took place on the night of September 10:

- Now everything should be considered through the prism of militaristic exercises, which are conducted by Russia, including on the territory of Belarus, but not only - in the Barents Sea, in the Baltic Sea, in the Kaliningrad region.

And this drone attack also falls here, because what kind of "exercises" can there be during the war? Russia is waging a war, so any actions related to troops, troop movements, and equipment are one of the manifestations of military operations. That is, certain scenarios are being practiced. Again we hear about nuclear weapons, which they threaten to bring to the territory of Belarus once again. Again we hear about the deployment of Iskanders and Oreshnikovs equipped with nuclear warheads. The same with drones.

I am convinced that this was a reconnaissance operation. Look how they flew: zigzagging all over the country to check routes, to identify vulnerable areas in Poland. So I was surprised by the reaction of both NATO and Poland - that "it was all accidental", that "Lukashenko warned". Lukashenko warned, fearing for his own skin, because they could simply hit the territory of Belarus and his residences in response.

But this reaction shows that NATO was not quite ready to apply Article 5, that is, to take collective action to protect one of the members of the Alliance. They decided for the time being to limit themselves to information sharing and reduce tensions a bit. I think such statements were made in order not to sow panic, to calm down the society.

But I hope, nevertheless, that some plan of response in case of repetition of such attacks (and I do not doubt that they will happen) has been developed in Brussels. I think that this plan includes, among other things, retaliatory strikes on the territory of the places from which these drones were launched, on the facilities that were launching sites. This is a very serious incident. It is not even an incident, but a militaristic action that is a military scenario.