Lavrov Smiles at Rubio as Russia Gambles With Disaster in NATO’s Poland - Newsweek

Sitting across from each other at a table in New York, Sergey Lavrov and Marco Rubio smiled for the cameras as their teams began a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly early on Wednesday morning.

There was much to talk about between Russia’s foreign minister and the U.S. secretary of state. Not least an incident a couple of hours earlier, in which a Russian military helicopter strayed across a border and into NATO’s airspace.

It is the latest provocation in a chain that has seen alleged Russian hybrid attacks taking place across allied NATO territory, including high-risk sabotage plots, that many European capitals fear is a prelude to a major Kremlin test of Article 5’s credibility.

Such a test of NATO’s commitment to collective defense would be a gamble with potentially catastrophic consequences. For now, Russia is operating in a murky gray zone, obscuring its involvement and giving itself enough room for plausible deniability.

That may be the color of its move against NATO, should it choose to.

Not a clear and direct attack, but one that can be explained away as an accident, as a defensive response, or as a strike of sufficient vagueness in origin that invoking Article 5 is not the obvious answer—or an answer that allies cannot agree on.

The latest incident was reported by Polish military command as having taken place over its border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad this morning, around 11:08 a.m. local time there.

Polish officials described it as a “brief violation” of the airspace by a Russian Mi-8 military helicopter, lasting around 42 seconds and penetrating 300 meters, before returning to its own skies above Kaliningrad.

Fighter jets were scrambled and ground-based forces put on standby. Poland was clear that this was a signal from Moscow. “The nature of the incident indicates that Russia is once again testing the readiness of our air defense,” Polish military command said.

“The crews of the Republic of Poland's air defense systems conduct round-the-clock observation, remaining in constant readiness to ensure the safety of Polish airspace.”

Poland’s prime minister has already described the scenarios he anticipates from Russia. Addressing Parliament on September 17, Donald Tusk cited intelligence assessments warning of planned Russian drone and missile strikes against countries supporting Ukraine, including Poland.

Moscow would portray these as accidents, Tusk said, seeking to demonstrate that Article 5 “exists only in theory.”

Crucially, he distinguished this threat from a conventional attack, saying “there is nothing to suggest an invasion”—a warning about how Russia might undermine collective defense without launching an unmistakable war against the alliance.

Article 5 is not an automatic declaration of war, nor is it limited to tanks crossing a border. NATO says significant cyber and other hybrid attacks can qualify as an armed attack, with that threshold assessed case by case.

Even when the collective-defense obligation applies, each ally must assist but chooses the action it deems necessary, which need not involve armed force.

The challenge is therefore political as well as military. It requires agreeing on when a provocation has become an attack, and what a credible collective response should be.

Rubio’s task with Lavrov, as well as trying to convince Moscow to bring its Ukraine war to a conclusion, is to draw some very clear red lines for the Kremlin on what NATO is unwilling to tolerate from Russia.

And, vitally, where crossing them will meet a punishing response.

Otherwise, Russia will continue its risky probing to work out where those red lines are for itself, on the assumption that U.S.-led NATO is too unsure, too disunited, or plain too weak to carve them in the ground.

It's a situation Rubio recognizes himself. After his Lavrov meeting, Rubio told reporters of his fear that the war in Ukraine could spread.

"One of the concerns we have, among many, about the war between Russia and Ukraine is that it could metastasize and spread into other places, that it could grow into somewhere else," Rubio said.

"Be it through a hybrid attack, be it through a sabotage attack, be it through a misunderstanding. You know, some pilot went the wrong way and all of a sudden you've got active combat. These things are of concern.

"We've raised that in multiple meetings with multiple countries because it's of real concern. This is how things sometimes get out of control."

The challenge, then, is to keep things in control—by setting hard lines and then enforcing them.

Clarity and credibility will help avoid a miscalculation—like, for example, a stray Russian helicopter shot down by NATO's air defenses—that would be a disaster for everyone.