Poland’s State Protection Service (SOP) spotted and “neutralised” a drone flying over government buildings in central Warsaw.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced the incident yesterday amid heightened tensions following other recent airspace violations.
“Just a while ago, the State Protection Service neutralised a drone operating over government buildings. Two Belarusian citizens were detained. Police are investigating the circumstances,” Tusk wrote on Platform X.
The drone was spotted over an area that contains both the State residences of the Polish President and the PM. The two Belarusians who were alleged to be operating it were apprehended within minutes and the drone has been secured by the authorities.
The area is designated a no-fly zone for drones unless operators secure a permit and violations are punishable by up to five years in prison.
The government was anxious to stress it was alert to such issues. Deputy interior minister Wiesław Szczepański told Polsat News the incident “showed that the services are active and guarding the state’s most important facilities.
“It shows that Poland is safe and that we are working to neutralise such incidents.”
The latest such came less than a week after around 20 Russian drones crossed into Polish airspace during an overnight attack on Ukraine. Some were shot down by NATO air forces, the first time a NATO member had opened fire during Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Since the Russian drone incursion, the Tusk government has been stressing that the authorities are reacting appropriately, securing air support from other NATO member states such as France, UK and Czechia. That was part of the newly launched “Eastern Sentry” operation.
Tusk has warned that Poland today is the “the closest it has been to open conflict since World War II”.
Foreign minister Radosław Sikorski has again argued that NATO should consider shooting down Russian drones over western Ukraine if they are seen as a threat to the territory of a member state.
The opposition Conservatives (PiS)-aligned President Karol Nawrocki has supported government actions and has liaised with US President Donald Trump’s administration, securing a statement in the UN Security Council that the US would “defend every inch” of NATO soil in response to the Russian incursion of Polish airspace.
Former PiS foreign minister Jacek Czaputowicz, though, told State radio station Trójka that the Russian drone incursion showed “Poland effectively has no drone defence”.
Czaputowicz argued it was not sustainable in the long term for “fighter planes to be engaged firing expensive rockets to down cheap decoy drones”, as had happened on September 10 during the drone incursion.
“Poland needs an air defence system against drones and will require help from Ukraine which now has the greatest experience as a result of having to combat Russian drones daily to develop it,” said Czaputowicz.
He also said he felt that the temporary closure of the border with Belarus activated by the government in response to the ongoing Russian-Belarusian Zapad military exercises cut off the Baltic States from the rest of NATO and may have led the Russians to” retaliate” with the drone incursion.
That border closure has been criticised by Russia and was also seen as an unwelcome development by China since much of its goods traffic to Poland is dependent on the rail link that goes through the Polish-Belarusian border.
