‘Russians Don’t Believe in Win-Win: For Them To Win, Someone Must Lose,’ Says Member of the European Parliament Hermann Tertsch
As Poland invokes Article 4 after drones hit its territory, analysts warn Europe risks capitulation if it answers missiles with words
Poland’s downing of Russian drones inside its own airspace marked a dramatic first for NATO, bringing the alliance into uncharted territory. For the first time in its 75-year history, a member state shot down Moscow’s aircraft during active operations. By morning, fragments of wreckage were scattered across farmland, a family home in the village of Wyryki lay gutted by an explosion, and airports near Warsaw had been shut for hours, yet the political reaction across Europe has remained cautious, almost subdued.
“Russians don’t know win-win, and they don’t believe in win-win. For a Russian to think he has won, he must see someone else has lost,” said Hermann Tertsch, a member of the European Parliament from the Patriots for Europe group, in an interview with The Media Line from Brussels.
It is not an accident. It is a test. These are Putin’s tests. He makes probes, he touches different places to check the pulse.
Tertsch dismissed the idea of an accident. “It is not an accident. It is a test. These are Putin’s tests. He makes probes, he touches different places to check the pulse—how some react, how others react, how the Americans look at it, how the Europeans look at it, how they look at each other,” he explained. For him, Moscow’s ambitions go far beyond securing territory in Ukraine. “That is the great misunderstanding of many people, including Trump’s first approach. Putin wants to change the strategic map of Europe. For that he needs more than four shabby, decadent and impoverished provinces.”
Dr. Evgeni Klauber, a professor at the School of Political Science at Tel Aviv University, voiced a similar concern. Speaking with The Media Line, he argued that the deeper danger lies in NATO’s ambiguity. “This is not the first time Russian drones have crossed into NATO space, but it is the first time they were deliberately targeted. If drones are not an attack, then what is?” Klauber asked. “Today, war is not about tanks crossing borders. It is a war of drones. If drones over Poland are not an attack, then when will NATO admit its own red line has been crossed?”
Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk had told Parliament that his country was closer to war than at any time since 1945. To Klauber, such declarations were theatrics. “It was pure rhetoric,” he said. “Markets are sensitive to real decisions. When the German defense minister announced funding for Rheinmetall, its stock rose immediately. That was real. Tusk’s warning was rhetoric.”
While Warsaw opted for Article 4 consultations, Tertsch brushed off any idea that NATO might go further. Poland responded by triggering Article 4 of the NATO treaty, which obliges allies to hold urgent consultations whenever one feels its territorial integrity or security is under threat. Unlike Article 5, which enshrines the principle that an attack on one is an attack on all and can lead to collective military action, Article 4 does not commit members to a specific response beyond political coordination. The distinction is subtle but decisive: one article initiates a conversation; the other can start a war.
“They will not invoke Article 5 now, although possibly some would have wanted it. But they are not going to invoke it. For these drones, they are probes,” Tertsch said. Looking ahead, he suggested a more dangerous scenario: a Russian attempt to seize a corridor to Kaliningrad through Belarus and northern Poland, effectively cutting the Baltics off from the rest of the alliance. “It would be comparable to the Berlin Blockade in 1949, the first great test of will between East and West,” he warned.
This holiday season, give to:
Truth and understanding
The Media Line's intrepid correspondents are in Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Pakistan providing first-person reporting.
They all said they cover it.
We see it.
We report with just one agenda: the truth.
If Putin’s tactics look like improvisation, both interviewees insisted that they are carefully calibrated. Klauber described the drone swarm as “a psychological act.” “Russia sends those drones to show domestically to the Russian people that Europe is speechless, and to show externally that half a billion Europeans with advanced technology still depend on America’s 300 million to protect them from Russia,” he explained.
Tertsch sees the same pattern, but expresses it more bluntly: “He will keep doing these little things. They could happen in Moldova or anywhere else. It all depends on how he reads the European mood and the US reaction.”
France and Germany are in ruins, and Putin knows it. … If I were an enemy, I would say this is a perfect moment
Europe’s two central powers, he argued, have made themselves easy targets. “France and Germany are in ruins, and Putin knows it. Germany has been saying for three years that it is with Ukraine, but it has never given it anything that really mattered. France is the same. Macron’s government is practically in collapse. If I were an enemy, I would say this is a perfect moment.”
By contrast, Warsaw stands out. “Poland has become a very important force. It has been arming itself for years, very, very solidly, with a defense budget at 4.7% of GDP, building a serious army in active service and in reserve. And now they have the absolute idyll of President Nawrocki with Trump. The Americans are increasing their presence in Poland while reducing it in Germany,” Tertsch noted.
Klauber, for his part, returned to the weakness of rhetoric. “You cannot pose words against missiles. Macron says harsh words. Donald Tusk says harsh words. But it is just words. In this situation, you need hard power,” he warned. “When hard power meets hard power, Russia reduces its commitment. When hard power meets soft words, Russia pushes further.”
The United States looms over all these calculations. Klauber described Donald Trump as “a broken loudspeaker in a train station,” producing statements so contradictory that they end up serving Putin’s interests. “Putin trains Trump to believe that casualties are just natural consequences of war. And Trump cannot openly condemn Putin without undermining his own previous attempts at rapprochement.”
Tertsch offered his own judgment on the US president. “The last months have not been brilliant for Trump on the Russian question. The Alaska meeting was a ridiculous spectacle. He should move away from the idea of friendly arrangements with Putin, because that will not work and it will leave Putin in a privileged position.” Yet he conceded Trump’s pragmatism could still alter the picture. “Trump is a businessman, and he will look for the formulas that suit him best at every moment.”
For Klauber, Trump’s ambitions are even more troubling. He pointed to the notion of a “G3”—Trump, Putin, and China’s Xi Jinping carving the globe into spheres of influence, leaving Europe as a bystander. “Trump wants Europeans to buy American weapons, Putin wants to show he defeated NATO, and Xi wants Taiwan. It’s a dangerous bargain,” he said.
Ukraine has been an immense school for modern war, and above all for the new type of war with drones
On the ground, the war in Ukraine has already transformed military practice. “Ukraine has been an immense school for modern war, and above all for the new type of war with drones,” Tertsch explained. “It is a revolution as profound as the arrival of the tank or the airplane to war.” Klauber underlined the political lesson: “Every provocation left unanswered becomes a victory in itself. Europe risks capitulating twice: once by failing to act, and again by allowing Putin to define this as the new normal.”
Beneath these analyses runs a deeper critique of Europe itself. Tertsch described the European Union as paralyzed. “The Europeans work slowly and badly, slowly and badly, and they put up too many obstacles to everything. The European Union is a mess right now. Its big countries are in ruins because they have adopted a socialist, interventionist, centralist drift that people do not want. All European countries are poorer and less free than they were six years ago. That means something,” he argued.
Klauber concluded by recalling Churchill’s famous saying. “When you don’t respond, you will get both shame and war,” he warned. “Europe risks both.”
The convergence of voices from Brussels and Tel Aviv—one political, one academic—highlights the scale of the challenge. Poland’s skies have already become the testing ground for Moscow’s ambitions and NATO’s hesitation. What is at stake is not only the security of a single member state but the credibility of the entire alliance.
