Walking through central Warsaw on Wednesday evening, it was difficult to tell that Poland had come closer to open conflict than any time since World War II, as Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk had told the Polish parliament earlier that day.
Bars, cafés and restaurants teemed with people in the warm September weather.
Streets and avenues like Nowy Świat, Marszałkowska and Świętokrzyska were buzzing with locals and tourists enjoying the end of the late summer.
The only disruption to normal life seemed to be the large-scale renovation works on the city's central tram lines.
If Poland had come close to war that morning, then the general populace was not letting it disrupt a midweek evening.
People I spoke to were concerned, but not entirely shocked.
During August, there had been at least three separate incidents of single drones crash landing in eastern Poland from the direction of Belarus. Those incidents had received coverage in the press, but nothing substantial.
What was slightly unnerving for people I spoke to during Wednesday was that so many drones - at least 19 - had crossed into Poland, some landing in the central Łodz region, almost 300km from the nearest border crossing with Belarus.
Like everyone with a mobile phone in Poland, I received a text message from the government on Wednesday morning, instructing residents to report any drone crash sites to authorities and not to go near them.
The number of drones and the fact that Poland's armed forces had made the decision, along with the Dutch air force, to shoot down the objects, said straight away that this was a major violation of Polish airspace.
A statement by the Belarussian Army Command later on Wednesday that the drones had flown "off course" hardly seemed plausible.
I asked the nighttime security guard at my office, a man in his late 30s or early 40s, what he made of the news about the drones, and I was given the most pragmatic of Polish replies.
"Nie ma wyjścia," he said, which literally translates as: "There is no way out". A more colloquial translation into English would be: "There is no alternative."
"If it comes to it, the men will stay and the women and children will leave," he then said without any hint of drama.
Stay and fight? I asked him.
Yes. "Nie ma wyjścia," he repeated. Poland’s geography and history were tied up in his three-word answer.
Had it really come to that?
Was Poland about to go through what Ukraine had experienced in February 2022, with men ordered to stay and fight, and women and children forced to get on trains heading west to escape a Russian invasion?
It is unlikely.
September 2025 is not September 1939.
The overriding view among Polish defence analysts and former senior Polish military officers, who spent all day Wednesday commenting to the country’s media outlets, was that the drone incursions had been a Russian attempt to test Poland’s air defences.
"We are most likely dealing with a large-scale provocation," said Mr Tusk early on Wednesday morning.
Later that day, Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski said that it was the assessment of Polish and NATO air forces that Russia had deliberately targeted Poland’s airspace.
"I don’t believe in mistakes or accidental developments," Kamil Kłysiński, a Polish expert on Belarussian foreign and domestic policy, told RTÉ News.
"We shouldn’t underestimate the scale of planning of events in Minsk and Moscow. I think they have a plan of deceptions, which comes from a long tradition of the Russian empire."
"They would like to test how far we can go, how loyal we are in NATO. One of those kinds of tests was on 10th September," said Mr Kłysiński, a senior fellow at the Centre for Eastern Studies, a thinktank in Warsaw.
The Kremlin has not commented directly on the drone incursions, saying that it sees statements from Warsaw as "nothing new".
Podcast: Is Russia testing NATO with drones in Poland?
But the timing of the drone incursions does not seem coincidental either.
Even before Wednesday, Polish and other NATO military commanders had pinpointed this week as potential flash point along the alliance’s eastern flank.
That is because Russia and Belarus had planned a joint five-day military exercise to take place in Belarus, eastern Russia and the Baltic Sea. Those drills, known as "Zapad" (meaning "West" in Russian) began on Friday and will run until next Tuesday.
Normally held every two years by Russia and Belarus, previous 'Zapad’ drills have simulated attacks on western neighbours.
The last one in 2021, one year before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, involved up to 200,000 troops and took place close to the borders of Poland and Lithuania.
This weekend’s 'Zapad’ is a much smaller affair.
According to Lithuanian military intelligence, 30,000 Russian and Belarussian troops are expected to take part in the drills.
But Warsaw’s Centre for Eastern Studies estimates that the number of personnel may be even smaller, with as few as 10,000 troops taking part, including only about 2,000 Russian troops.
Russia cannot spare extra manpower for this year’s exercise given that an estimated 600,000 of its troops are deployed as part of its invasion of Ukraine, about half the number of total personnel enlisted across Russia’s armed forces.
It is impossible to know if Wednesday's drone incursions were part of the wider 'Zapad' exercises to test NATO’s responses. But it cannot be ruled out either.
The use of low-cost Gerbera drones, which Russia employs as decoys during its massive aerial attacks in Ukraine, and the fact that the drones did not carry explosives, also suggests that Wednesday’s incursions were part of an exercise.
Not taking any chances this weekend, Poland has deployed up to 40,000 troops close to its borders with Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, though there have been no confirmed reports that Zapad drills will take part in Kaliningrad.
Mr Tusk was right when he said that Poland had not come this close to open conflict since World War II.
But Warsaw’s decision to invoke Article 4 of the NATO Treaty, rather than Article 5, which would mean war, shows restraint.
In response to Wednesday’s events, Poland and its NATO allies have beefed up their air defences along the alliance’s eastern borders.
They want to make sure that Russian drones over Polish skies or Lithuanian, Latvian, or Estonian skies for that matter, don’t become the new norm.
For if Russia and Belarus continue to fire drones, unarmed or not, into eastern NATO countries, then the western military alliance will continue to shoot them down. Repeated incursions and retaliatory fire would render invocations of Article 4 pointless.
If a Russian drone kills soldiers or civilians in a NATO country, then that would further ratchet up tensions to the point of open conflict.
"We cannot exclude full conflict, but nobody is interested in that, not even Putin," said Mr Kłysiński.
"Maybe it is more possible after Putin tries to defeat Ukraine."
Read more:
Poland warns of 'open conflict' risk after drone incident
