The heart of the European Union is beating ever more eastward. Only a few hours after news began to circulate of the incursion of Russian drones into Polish airspace and the action of NATO jets scrambling to shoot them down, Brussels gave the green light to funds for further defense of the Alliance's eastern bastion against the Federation. The countries closest to the Ukrainian border have long been asking the Union to finance the defense of their borders: in particular, Poland, Estonia, and Lithuania maintain that they are the first front to have to defend the rest of the European family in the event of a Russian attack, and are pushing for access to funds from the Safe program for the production of drones and anti-drone systems. And as of Wednesday, Commission President von der Leyen seems convinced of this:"There is no doubt: Europe's eastern flank protects all of Europe. From the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. That's why we must invest in supporting it through an eastern flank surveillance system."

Just a few days before the decision, the Commission president was on a frontline tour in Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland. Since 2022, Europe has provided Ukraine with approximately €170 billion in military and financial aid, the Kyiv Post writes. Now the green light has also been given for the Drone Alliance with Ukraine: Europe will allocate €6 billion for the production of drones on Ukrainian soil through the G7-led Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration (ERA). Since 2022, Ukraine, which previously lacked such weapons, has started producing these aircraft, which are responsible for over 23% of Russian equipment losses, the president estimates.

This is not the first time that Russian weapons and aircraft have ended up on European soil or come too close to the Union's border. The list of alleged attacks, accidents, and errors is long. Indeed, this latest incident is not the first in which"the Russian war effort has extended beyond Ukraine's borders," writes the New York Times: "In March 2024, a Russian cruise missile briefly violated Polish airspace near the eastern town of Oserdow, prompting NATO to scramble its fighter jets." The missile then returned to Ukraine. A week ago, other drones entered Polish territory twice. In September 2023 and the same month a year later, Romania declared that aircraft debris had ended up on its territory: for Bucharest, this was a"gross violation" of its national sovereignty. In the first year of the war, the wreckage of an aircraft ended up in a border village in Moldova.