Russia violated Poland’s airspace early on Sunday with a cruise missile launched at targets in western Ukraine, Poland’s armed forces said.
Russia launched 57 missiles and drones on Ukraine in the early hours, including attacking Kyiv and the western region of Lviv that is near the Polish border.
Countries have the right to control their own airspace, including shooting things in it down, absent treaty commitment otherwise. It’s not a causus belli to do that.
We shot down that spy balloon from China that flew over the US a bit back. China did not declare war on the US.
Now, maybe you’d score political points if you refrain from shooting it down, given that in some cases the violation is maybe accidental or especially if it’s a manned aircraft. But a cruise missile flying a programmed route is probably about as reasonable a target as one could get.
And legally, Russia would have been the one in the wrong, as they don’t have the right to move military forces through a country without that country accepting it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 The Soviet Union had used this very argument. Despite the loss of a US House Representative during the incident it did not in fact start WW3
Yeah. Or, say, the Gary Powers shootdown, where we were spying on military sites, and unlike KAL 007, the overflight wasn’t accidental. That’s probably more-analogous to the cruise missile here, because it’s unlikely that Russia inadvertently flew a precision-guided munition a kilometer or two into another country – it shouldn’t have that level of accuracy error.
I’d also add that from Ukraine’s standpoint, while it’s probably not desirable to have cruise missiles coming from another direction, there is one benefit that might accrue from Russia doing this. While there might be infighting in Congress over the Ukraine aid bill, there are no constraints on the Executive Branch over sending US forces in defense of NATO countries. I know that Turkey requested the US have some Patriot batteries stationed over there for some time. So if Russia trying to slip cruise missiles down the Polish border becomes a thing, we can probably allocate resources to it a with a lot less potential for friction.
I wonder exactly what Russia’s goal is with this?
considers
I can think of maybe three possibilities.
First, just having cruise missiles from another direction might make Ukraine’s air defense problems more-complicated.
Second, it might be trying to exploit poor coordination in areas under two different military commands. If Poland doesn’t want to shoot into Ukraine and Ukraine doesn’t want to shoot into Poland, it might be a clever way to leverage that. By flying it right down the border, it might mean that neither Ukraine nor Poland shoots at it, and might be that neither is sharing full information with the other on what exactly is flying around. For information that is shared, it may take longer for the Polish military and Ukrainian military to communicate than it does either to communicate information internally, if it has to go up through some high-level figures…air defense requires pretty rapid response.
Historically, there have sometimes been major military successes by exploiting poor coordination between military forces without unity of command, as they can’t exchange information and react as quickly than if only one were clearly being hit, and don’t have freedom of action in the area of the other’s command. In World War II, the Japanese scored a major victory against the US at the Battle of Savo Island, almost entirely because they had an operation that crossed areas of responsibility of US command that weren’t coordinating well – and that wasn’t even two different countries. MacArthur’s command didn’t know that Nimitz’s command was conducting a major operation that might be put at risk by the Japanese counterattack. Nimitz’s command had the information to understand the risk and import of Japanese movements, but didn’t have the reconaissance information that MacArthur’s command did. While they did share information anyway and could have figured things out given time, that information-sharing became a matter of some hours. Result: Japan was able to have their forces, despite being detected multiple times, conduct a ballsy and extremely-successful surprise counterattack.
And third, maybe if you send cruise missiles right atop the border – or even zig-zagging back and forth between countries – then it creates grounds for political disputes, like if Ukraine shoots at the thing with a SAM and the SAM misses and lands in Poland. Or, even a successful shootdown by Ukraine over Poland might generate political fodder for, say, people like Robert Fico in Slovakia, who has raised concerns about the war expanding to NATO countries. Russia can’t outright create an international incident between the two, but they can create conditions fertile for them, maybe have an information campaign ready-to-go if one does occur.
considers
One option to counter Possibility Two might be creating a no-fly zone spanning the border where Poland and Ukraine agree that the other’s military is free, absent prior warning that something friendly is moving in the area, to knock down anything they see flying down the border corridor.
We’ve also had ISR aircraft, F-35s flying in stealth mode, and tankers refuelling those in the Polish-airspace-bordering-Ukraine over the course of the war, so I kind of assume that there’s already some sort of interchange of information among countries going on.