The past couple of weeks have brought an unprecedented escalation along the Nato-Russia border – threatening to drag neighbouring countries into the war in Ukraine.
On Tuesday, many woke to the news that mysterious drones had caused the shutdown of Copenhagen and Oslo airports. Russian fighter jets had already entered Estonian airspace for 12 minutes on Friday. And before that – the incident that started it all – a raid of about 20 Russian drones entered deep into Polish territory. After several were shot down, Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, declared it was the closest the country had been to military conflict since the second world war.
The Guardian’s defence editor, Dan Sabbagh, analyses Russia’s high-risk new strategy on its western border. Why is Putin seemingly provoking Nato countries? And what are the risks if their response is to, sometime soon, shoot down a Russian plane?