Russia rolls 200 launchers into drill

Fewer than 20 Ukrainian drone operators destroyed most of a NATO armoured column during a Swedish military exercise that ended on May 13. Six days later, Russia opened a nuclear forces drill on a scale well beyond its annual exercises. When conventional deterrence starts looking brittle, nuclear signalling carries more weight.

What Twenty Drone Pilots Exposed

Aurora 26, an 18,000-strong exercise across Gotland and southern Sweden involving 13 allied nations, was meant to test Sweden’s defence against hybrid threats. Two small Ukrainian drone teams were invited to play the adversary. They ended up giving NATO a fairly brutal lesson.

In one scenario, they destroyed 28 of roughly 32 heavy armoured vehicles and cleared an entire airfield in 20 minutes. The exercise had to be paused three times so defenders could regroup.

Swedish Defence Minister Pål Jonson did not try to soften the result. "It is completely right that they were demanding," he said, adding that "Ukraine is the best in the world at this." Supreme Commander Michael Claesson said all NATO allies must learn drone warfare "as quickly as possible".

Russia's Nuclear Drill, Without a Treaty

On May 19, Russia began a three-day nuclear exercise involving all three parts of its nuclear triad at once: land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and strategic bombers. The drill put more than 200 missile launchers, 140 aircraft, 73 ships, and 13 submarines into play.

Russia’s annual "Grom" nuclear exercises usually involve a few thousand troops and a small number of test launches. This was much larger.

Belarus took part, explicitly practising "the delivery of nuclear munitions and their preparation for use". Russia has stationed its Oreshnik intermediate-range missile system in Belarus, from where it can reach every European capital in under ten minutes. No European NATO member has a comparable system deployed.

The exercise is also the first major drill since New START, the last US-Russia nuclear arms limitation treaty, expired on February 5. For the first time since 1972, there is no legally binding verification regime between the two nuclear powers. NATO can no longer confirm Russian warhead numbers through treaty inspections. It now has to rely on satellite imagery and signals intelligence.

Drones Already Crossing Borders

The disorder created by Ukraine’s drone war is already spilling into allied territory. On May 15, Finland closed Helsinki-Vantaa airport for three hours and told 1.7 million residents to stay indoors after intelligence warnings that Ukrainian drones heading towards Russia might stray into Finnish airspace. Nine flights were diverted.

No drone arrived. But the lockdown showed how far the edge of the war now reaches.

Four days later, a Romanian F-16 operating under NATO Baltic Air Policing, the rotating fighter patrol that guards Baltic skies, shot down an unidentified drone over southern Estonia (Uudis.net, Polsatnews). It was the first such shootdown in Estonia’s history.

Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur said the aircraft was likely a Ukrainian drone that had veered off course. The incident came during Estonia’s Spring Storm exercise, which that same week had been practising drone response scenarios.

These incidents fed straight into the week’s sharpest diplomatic split. Finland’s President Alexander Stubb proposed coordinated European dialogue with Putin, but only with mandates from European leaders and Ukraine. Lithuania’s President Nausėda rejected the idea outright.

The disagreement is not just about two presidents. Europe has no settled view on how to engage Moscow while Russia raises its nuclear profile and stray drones keep turning up over allied territory.

The Ankara NATO summit in July will have to deal with that gap. It comes after NATO’s conventional forces have been shown up by cheap drones, Russia has demonstrated nuclear reach at scale, and the treaty system that once gave both sides some transparency has fallen away. For Ireland, watching from outside NATO but inside the European security argument, the question is not abstract. Whether allies arrive in Turkey with a drone doctrine, a nuclear posture review, or another round of disagreement will shape the summer.