One of the most reported-upon aspects of the newly clinched Polish-Ukrainian security pact, which was summarized here and analyzed at length here, was that Poland agreed to discuss the interception of Russian missiles over Ukraine. The caveat though was that this would “follow necessary procedures agreed by the States and organisations involved”, and outgoing NATO chief Stoltenberg just said that his bloc is against doing so after the US and UK expressed a similar stance earlier in the year.
Ukraine likely feels jaded after Zelensky hyped up this “provision to develop a mechanism for intercepting Russian missiles and drones in Ukraine’s airspace aimed at Poland” during his press conference with Tusk in Warsaw last week after they signed their security pact. Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski, who’s one of the EU’s most infamous anti-Russian hawks, probably feels foolish too after claiming the day prior to Stoltenberg’s comments on Sunday that Poland was still “exploring the idea”.
In hindsight, this clause was only included in the Polish-Ukrainian security pact as a means of Warsaw signaling its support for Kiev even though it was never going to unilaterally act on that proposal since it explicitly included the requirement that it be “agreed” by NATO. It might also be that Zelensky, Sikorski, and the other anti-Russian hawks in those two countries thought they could convince the Anglo-American Axis to approve this escalation, however, hence their optimistic comments about it.
Nevertheless, their refusal to greenlight the Polish interception of Russian missiles over Ukraine speaks to the fact that NATO is still reluctant to escalate in a way that risks drawing the bloc directly into the conflict, though that doesn’t mean that some countries might not intervene unilaterally. France and Poland already talked about doing so under certain conditions, but it remains unclear whether they’ll actually go through with it if the time comes such as if Russia achieves a military breakthrough.
In any case, whatever they might do in that respect is separate from NATO as a whole authorizing the interception of Russian missiles, which could prompt Russia to target their air defense systems and thus lead to NATO feeling pressured to directly strike Russian targets whether in Ukraine or Russia proper. Although they’re playing a dangerous game of nuclear chicken with Russia, NATO is still exercising a degree of self-restraint, albeit solely due to its self-interest and not out of any so-called “responsibility”.
Zelensky, Sikorski, and their ilk might therefore collude to stage a false flag incident of some sort for moving the needle on a conventional NATO intervention in Ukraine instead of risking a “coalition of the willing” going in without any ironclad promises that Article 5 would protect them. After all, they’re heavily invested in that scenario since it would reassure Kiev that it won’t suffer a strategic defeat if Russia achieves a military breakthrough, but it’s too early to predict what form this might take.
Regardless of whatever ends up happening, the takeaway is that NATO (or rather, the Anglo-American Axis that’s most responsible for its decisions) has thus far kept the most vicious anti-Russian hawks at bay by refusing to approve Poland’s interception of Russian missiles over Ukraine. This doesn’t mean that they’ll be able to do so indefinitely, but it’s still significant that they haven’t capitulated to their latest escalation proposal, which shows that there are still some coolheaded figures behind the scenes.
