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VIENNA — Russia has captured a large number of Ukrainian drones and may be planning to use them against NATO or to stage a false flag attack, Polish defense minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said, adding to earlier warnings of a potential escalation.

The senior official’s statement comes after more than a month of unusual public warnings by several Eastern European countries that Russia was planning some form of a provocation or hybrid attack, with government officials citing numerous pieces of intelligence that pointed them to this conclusion.

Poland, Lithuania and Latvia have been among the countries raising the alarm, some citing U.S. intelligence that had been shared with them.

The latest information, first shared by Poland’s defense minister on Monday, outlines a concrete threat vector for what was previously a more general warning of Russian malicious intent.

The threat appears to be taken seriously by the Eastern European capitals, and the Polish government prioritized the topic for discussion in Tuesday’s security committee meeting. Following the meeting, Kosiniak-Kamysz reiterated the specific warning.

In addition to drone incursions, he also said GPS jamming and various acts of sabotage may be on the table.

The countries surrounding the Baltic Sea have been affected by Russian GPS interference since the early days of the war, sometimes leading to airport closures and navigation problems. Sabotage, too, has featured, including the disabling of a rail line in eastern Poland last year.

Government officials also noted cyber warfare as a possible avenue for Russian actions against NATO countries.

In late June, Latvian intelligence first told Fox News they had detected Russian preparations for a hybrid attack that would fall short of the threshold for open war. The attack might include “missiles, drones or other actions designed to send a signal: stop supporting Ukraine, or you will have your own problems,” Fox News Digital quoted Latvian intelligence as saying.

A week later, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he had been receiving warnings about a Russian test of NATO resolve and possible attack on Polish soil from allied intelligence agencies for weeks, adding in a press conference that “the coming months may truly be critical.” Polish publication Onet had previously reported from a source close to Polish president Karol Nawrocki that the U.S. had shared concrete warnings of hostile Russian actions with the government in Warsaw.

Last week, Latvian and Lithuanian leaders warned specifically of “limited kinetic operations” targeting critical infrastructure.

The Kremlin’s press spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed this as “scare stories” that same week.

Some officials have warned that Russia may also be inclined to stage a false flag attack on its own territory to give it a pretense to escalate the war in Ukraine or expand it to include strikes on NATO countries. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski warned of such a scenario in late June, saying at the time that “I expect a false flag attack on Russian territory, to which Putin ‘will respond.’”

“The Russians are planning something again; we have credible information,” Sikorski told the press several weeks later, on July 9.

Similar public messaging − including the selective sharing of high-level intelligence by Western capitals − preceded the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. At the time, the Biden administration took the unprecedented step of declassifying and sharing with the public a large number of previously secret intelligence signals that pointed toward Russia preparing for a wholesale invasion of its western neighbor. Some officials and analysts have suggested the open sharing of information delayed the start of the invasion by several weeks.

Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, said on July 9 that he hoped the current sharing of public warnings would similarly deter Russia from following through on its plans.

However, no primary intelligence beyond the verbal statements made by high-level figures has been publicly shared so far by the Western countries now raising the alarm.

Russia has previously found ways to redirect Ukrainian drones that were launched by Kyiv to fall on NATO territory rather than reaching their intended targets of Russian military facilities, industry and oil storage facilities. The Baltic States and Finland have had several instances of misguided Ukrainian-launched drones striking their territories, including an oil storage facility in Latvia − an incident that led to two high-level resignations there, including of the prime minister.

Those cases have been publicly attributed to Russian electronic warfare and defensive signal jamming redirecting drones already in flight. Russia launching captured drones at the West would be a marked escalation from that precedent.

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An amateur astronomer's plans for a camping vacation two years ago transformed into a possible crater find in Canada's north.

Amateur astronomer Joël Lapointe, using Google Maps to figure out his route for the 2024 vacation, saw some odd terrain in Quebec's Côte-Nord region centered on Lake Marsal. Lapointe suspected it was an impact crater from a meteorite , and made a report on Impact Earth — a crowdsourcing website for craters with Canada's Western University in London, Ontario near Toronto. Western planetary geologist Gordon Osinski made a visit to the region in 2025, provisionally not only confirming the crater, but saying it's probably one of the biggest discovered in recent years. The 390-million-year old feature is roughly 15 miles (25 kilometers) wide.

In an email interview with Space.com while on travel in Scotland, Osinski — known as "Oz" by the space community — said to his knowledge the last discovery of that scale was the approximately 31-km (19-mile) Hiawatha structure, also possibly a crater, spotted in Greenland in 2018. "However, that structure is completely buried by ice, so its diameter is uncertain and there is still some controversy about its origin," Oz said.

But in the case of the new crater, called Uhackatik with approval from the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit in whose traditional lands the crater lies, there is no doubt at all where the crater came from. Oz's expedition to the area revealed "shock metamorphic effects", which are deformations to the rocks induced by the shock waves and heating produced by a meteorite impact.

"Impact melt rocks are like they sound: large volumes of rock that are melted by the impact event, but then cool and crystallize to look a lot like volcanic rocks," he said. "Finding these preserved — as they are usually some of the first parts of a crater to be eroded — was a big surprise."

While most of the features are microscopic, Oz said in the field he and his collaborators could easily see "shatter cones", which are branching features in rock layers produced by the shockwave of impact. The research is not yet peer-reviewed, but it will be presented at the 88th Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society in Frankfurt, Germany in August.

A shatter cone seen in rocks found at the center of the structure (left); melt rock found 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) west of the structure's center. (Image credit: Gattacceca, J. et al.) While 400-million-year-old impact craters on Earth are hard to find, as geologic activity as well as erosion change their features over time, the precious evidence is helpful for scientists to better understand meteorite impacts on the moon , Mars and other rocky extraterrestrial bodies.

In terms of age, Oz noted, the moon's prominent Tycho crater best represents what Uhackatik probably looked like 390 million years ago. But On Earth, one of the best comparisons to Uhackatik is a moon-like crater used to help the Artemis II astronauts get ready for their moon mission this year.

That Earth crater is called Kamestastin (also known as Mistastin) in northern Labrador, Canada. Oz regularly runs expeditions there in consultation with the Mushuau Innu First Nation, as the crater lies within their traditional hunting grounds. Kamestastin includes anorthosite, a common mineral found in craters at the moon's south pole, where NASA hopes to land astronauts under the US-led Artemis program .

Artemis II astronauts Jeremy Hansen (from the Canadian Space Agency or CSA) and Christina Koch (NASA), as well as CSA backup astronaut and lunar-flyby capcom Jenni Gibbons, did an expedition to Kamestastin crater in 2023 alongside Oz and collaborators.

"For comparative craters [to Uhackatik], Kamestastin is actually a great one as the size is very similar," Oz said. "Kamestastin is well-preserved and I've worked there a lot … so in my mind, I was using Kamestastin as a template for exploring this new potential crater."

To fully confirm Uhackatik's extraterrestrial origin, Oz and collaborators are examining samples microscopically for more evidence of shock effects, such as chemistry indicating a high-temperature melt, or deformation effects in the quartz. In the meantime, Oz's lunar work with NASA continues: he will be part of the geology teams supporting the moon-landing astronauts during the Artemis 4 and 5 missions, which will touch down as soon as 2028.