Russia deploys 200 nuclear launchers

Fewer than 20 Ukrainian drone operators destroyed most of a NATO armoured column during a Swedish military exercise that ended on 13 May. Six days later, Russia opened a nuclear forces drill far larger than its normal annual exercises. When cheap drones can break conventional deterrence in public, nuclear signalling carries more weight.

What Twenty Drone Pilots Exposed

Aurora 26, an 18,000-troop exercise across Gotland and southern Sweden involving 13 allied nations, was meant to test defence against hybrid threats. Two small Ukrainian drone teams, brought in to play the enemy, changed the lesson. They destroyed 28 of about 32 heavy armoured vehicles in one scenario and cleared an entire airfield in 20 minutes, forcing the exercise to stop three times so defenders could reorganise.

Swedish Defence Minister Pål Jonson did not dress it up. "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".

For Malta, which is outside NATO but inside the EU, this matters because European security is no longer neatly divided between alliance members and neutral states. Airspace, ports, energy routes and cyber systems do not observe that distinction.

Russia's Nuclear Drill, Without a Treaty

On 19 May, Russia began a three-day nuclear exercise involving all three parts of its nuclear triad: land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and strategic bombers. They were deployed simultaneously, with over 200 missile launchers, 140 aircraft, 73 ships, and 13 submarines in play. Russia's annual "Grom" nuclear exercises normally involve a few thousand troops and a small number of test launches. This was a different scale.

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

The exercise is also the first major drill since New START, the last US-Russia nuclear arms limitation treaty, expired on 5 February. For the first time since 1972, there is no legally binding verification system between Washington and Moscow. NATO can no longer confirm Russian warhead numbers through treaty inspections. It now depends 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 15 May, Finland closed Helsinki-Vantaa airport for three hours and told 1.7 million residents to stay indoors after intelligence warnings that Ukrainian drones flying towards Russia might drift into Finnish airspace. Nine flights were diverted. No drone arrived, but the closure showed how wide the war's outer edge has become.

Four days later, a Romanian F-16 serving in NATO Baltic Air Policing, the rotating fighter patrol guarding 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 it was probably a Ukrainian drone that had gone off course. The incident happened during Estonia's Spring Storm exercise, which that same week had been practising drone response scenarios.

Those drone incidents fed 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 division is wider than two presidents. Europe has no common line on how to engage Moscow while Russia raises its nuclear profile and drones keep appearing near allied airspace.

The Ankara NATO summit in July will have to deal with that gap. It comes after NATO's conventional forces were embarrassed by cheap drones, Russia displayed nuclear reach at scale, and the treaty system that once gave both sides some visibility disappeared. The question for summer is whether allies arrive in Turkey with a drone doctrine, a nuclear posture review, or another round of disagreement.