Russian Barrage Exposes NATO Air Gap

In the small hours of June 2, Russia sent 73 missiles and 656 drones into Ukraine, one of the largest single barrages of the war (UNN, Chronicle.lu/Reuters). At least 11 people were killed and more than 100 wounded across Kyiv, Dnipro and Kharkiv. Poland scrambled fighter jets, activated ground-based air defences and closed its border airspace. Four days earlier, a Russian drone had hit an apartment block in Galați, Romania, injuring two civilians in the first such casualties on NATO soil. The alliance could see the threat. It had almost no room to shoot it down.

Seeing Everything, Shooting Nothing

Poland’s Operational Command said the scramble ended at 03:35 without any breach of Polish airspace, and credited NATO Air Command, France and the Netherlands for support (Fakt.pl). It was Poland’s sixth defensive activation in a year. The responses are getting quicker and more allied aircraft are involved. What looked like an emergency in 2024 is now becoming part of the night-time routine on NATO’s eastern edge.

The Galați strike on May 29 showed the harder problem. Romania tracked the drone for the full four minutes it spent over Romanian territory. F-16s were already in the air and had authority to release weapons. The interception still failed. Firing over a populated area risked civilian damage. Peacetime rules prevented shooting into Ukrainian airspace. Ground-based counter-drone systems had no clearance for use over a city (Mediafax). Romania’s defence minister, Radu Miruță, said the systems were "designed before 2023, prior to large-scale drone warfare."

Romania’s foreign minister, Oana Țoiu, said publicly that the Galați strike "fits the category justifying" Article 4, the NATO procedure that allows a member state to request alliance consultations when it feels threatened. Bucharest then decided not to invoke it. According to Euronews.ro, sources close to the presidency say Washington advised against that step and offered capability transfers instead. Romania expelled Russia’s ambassador and ordered the Russian consulate in Constanța to close within 30 days.

The Political Fracture

The barrage hit an alliance already divided over how to respond when Russian strikes come close to NATO territory. On May 21, the presidents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania issued a joint statement calling for NATO to move from Air Policing, which means monitoring and identifying aircraft, to Air Defence, which would allow engagement, along the eastern flank (Aerotime). Estonia’s foreign minister, Kaja Tsahkna, warned that "every gap, every softening response becomes an invitation for the next strike."

Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, expressed solidarity with Romania but put forward a special EU association status for Ukraine, a political signal that does not solve the interception gap on NATO’s border. Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, went in the other direction, calling for "immediate EU-Russia dialogue" (Noviny.sk, Novinky.cz). His own foreign minister, Juraj Blanár, condemned the strikes more sharply. Slovakia’s president called for NATO’s flank to be strengthened, without backing Fico’s push for dialogue.

Moscow’s Framing, NATO’s Deadline

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the war had entered "a completely different paradigm", citing a May 22 Ukrainian drone strike on a vocational college in occupied Starobelsk that killed 21 people (Devdiscourse/Reuters, RIA Novosti). The UN Security Council says it cannot verify that figure because Russia blocks access to occupied territory. Peskov also said the war "could be over by the end of the day" if Ukraine withdrew from regions claimed by Russia.

The "new paradigm" language fits a pattern already seen from the Kremlin: a specific incident is used to frame an escalation that appears prepared in advance. The same sequence followed the Kerch Bridge attack in 2022 and Ukraine’s use of ATACMS in 2024.

Romania signed €5.6 billion in SAFE programme contracts, using EU-funded defence procurement, for anti-drone systems on May 29 (Digi24). Delivery starts in 2027. The NATO summit in Ankara on July 7-8 is where the Baltic demand for a formal Air Defence posture will be decided. Until then, the eastern flank remains caught between detection and engagement. Every drone incident that passes without a collective response makes the next threshold harder to hold.