Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s deputy prime minister, said exercises around Kaliningrad should force Putin to take notice
Maxim Tucker
September 13, 2026
The Times
Nato should exercise so aggressively near Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave that President Putin pulls troops away from Ukraine to defend the area, Poland’s deputy prime minister has said. “There are hardly any troops there. So Putin knows or assumes that Nato is a peaceful alliance, that we will not take advantage of his local weakness,” Radoslaw Sikorski said. “We should exercise so aggressively on our side as to make him uncertain of what we will do, so that he needs to draw forces away from Ukraine.”
Sikorski spoke at the Yalta European Strategy meeting in Kyiv, where about 700 politicians, diplomats, business executives, military personnel, veterans, and experts from 28 countries met this weekend to grapple with how to bring the war to a close. It came as Russia attacked a truck near Ukraine’s border with Poland, Polish and Ukrainian officials said on Sunday. The Dorohusk-Yahodyn crossing point briefly stopped working after the attack about half a mile from Poland, but later resumed operations, Reuters reported. Meanwhile, Lithuania briefly closed Vilnius airport and Nato summoned at least one fighter jet in response to a possible sighting of a drone in Lithuanian airspace, the country’s national crises management centre said.
The Yalta event highlighted how European leaders have becoming increasingly combative in their attitude to Russia in the face of an unprecedented Kremlin campaign of hybrid warfare on the Continent — including cyber, arson, drone and bomb attacks. “By attacking eastern Europeans, [Putin] just maintains our national consensus for very high defence spending. And by attacking western Europeans, this is a major mistake by Putin. “His game should have been to convince Germans and French that this [war] is an eastern European problem. By attacking them, he’s proving that it’s an all-of-Europe problem,” Sikorski said. He was backed by France’s national security adviser, Emmanuel Bonne, who said: “We’re going to exercise together with the support of Poland and this is a strategic signal.”
France is also expanding its nuclear deterrent to cover eastern Europe, he added. “France, as a nuclear power as well, we are building kind of what we call the forward deterrence for European partners.”
The Kremlin is expected to escalate attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with ballistic missiles and its new jet-powered drones, hoping to freeze Ukrainian civilians into submission during their sub-zero winter. Ukraine has a dwindling supply of the interceptor missiles capable of dealing with the attacks.
Bonne announced that the EU would implement new sanctions on Chinese companies supplying components for the jet-powered Russian drones in the coming months.
European officials also said they hoped a tougher approach to the Kremlin may dissuade Putin from attacks on heating, electricity and water-treatment facilities, which would probably drive hundreds of thousands more Ukrainian refugees across the border into Europe.
Günter Sautter, Germany’s national security adviser, indicated that Berlin had hardened its support for Ukraine by lifting restraints on the use of its weapons against Russia. Germany is now Ukraine’s largest military backer after President Trump cut US military aid, and was prepared to “carry this burden” for “as long as it takes”, he said.
Europe planned further discussions about using frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine’s war effort, he added. “The question of frozen assets will pop up again for two reasons. One reason is this is money that is potentially available, and the other reason is that politically, and with a view to putting pressure on Russia to bring it to the table, it’s a smart thing to do,” he said. Belgium has so far blocked the use of frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine.
US officials attending the event struck a more conciliatory tone. President Trump’s peace envoy and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said Washington was working to resume trilateral talks between the US, Ukraine and Russia in the coming weeks.
His trips to Moscow and Kyiv this month with Steve Witkoff, another Trump peace envoy, had “led to some new ideas that hopefully we’ll be able to discuss at a trilateral soon,” he said. “I really hope in the next couple weeks we’ll be able to announce what the next steps are, and hopefully that will bring us closer to a pathway forward.” He added that a deal had been reached for a ceasefire monitoring mechanism backed by the US military, and new security guarantees for Ukraine. The sticking point remains territorial boundaries, however.
“When we did the last trilateral talk in Abu Dhabi, we completed a deconfliction mechanism and a monitoring mechanism where we had the US military there and we came up with a monitoring mechanism which, again, this is the military, that everyone feels that once there is a final resolution on the battle lines or on the territorial question, that you’ll be able to have a mechanism that hopefully everyone can abide by, and there’ll be a real mechanism both to enforce it, protect it, and oversee it.”
“President Putin laid out his line of what he wants to achieve. If Ukraine wanted to withdraw to that line, then obviously we have the rest of the deal set up and put together. Ukraine right now does not want to do that,” he said.
Europe should continue to be part of the peace process, said Jonathan Powell, the UK national security adviser, because even though Putin was a “terrorist” the war could end only by negotiating with him. “This war only ends in one way: it ends in a negotiation. [Putin] is not going to take Ukraine; he is not going to conquer Kyiv,” said Powell. “There will be a negotiation, he will have to participate in it, and it’s all about making him be serious for that negotiation.” He added that Putin’s threats of escalation were a sign of success in response to Ukrainian military progress on the front lines and economic pressure: “The escalation we hear talk about is not a problem; it’s a sign of success. Because what’s happening is the pressure that we are putting on Putin is finally paying off.”