Two unidentified flying objects have entered Polish airspace from the east and crashed on its territory, without having been detected by air defences.
The wreckage of one near the Belarus border crossing at Terespol was found by Border Guards in a cornfield yesterday. No injuries were reported and that initial checks found no explosives.
According to the defence ministry spokesman the object fell about 300 meters from the Polish-Belarusian border.
In a separate incident in a village in eastern Poland on September 6 remains were found of a drone bearing no military features. The authorities said they believed it may have been a smuggling drone.
One resident in whose field the drone crashed told commercial broadcaster Polsat News that Cyrillic inscriptions were found on the wreckage.
Polish investigators have confirmed that Cyrillic writing was also found on the drone found yesterday.
The incidents took place just after Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that Poland would respond with force to its airspace being violated.
“Anyone who violates Poland’s airspace must expect an immediate reaction by the Polish armed forces,” Tusk told reporters at a news conference in Łomża, about 150km northeast of Warsaw, on September 5.
He warned that provocations could carry “very serious consequences” including what he called “kinetic action”, a military term for the use of force.
But he added: “We are acting cautiously and without emotion to avoid harm,” saying Poland “will respond very decisively to such provocations”.
Tusk’s remarks came a day after Poland’s top military commander, General Wiesław Kukuła, said drones had twice violated Polish airspace on the night of September 3 when Russia carried out missile and drone strikes on neighbouring Ukraine.
The opposition right-wing Confederation party co-leader Krzysztof Bosak said: “Bearing in mind the drones are flying into Polish airspace undetected, it is obvious the government has not done its homework on drone defence, despite the fact that neighbouring Ukraine has all the expertise in this regard readily available.”
The opposition Conservatives (PiS) parliamentary deputy Jacek Sasin, speaking on public Radio Trójka today, also criticised the government. He recalled how Tusk’s party reacted when it was in opposition after a Russian rocket was found in a forest in Poland in 2023.
“I well remember the criticism of our defence minister Mariusz Błaszczak of Poland having no air defences when a Russian rocket was found. Now we have drones flying in undetected and where was the improvement in air defences Tusk has promised?” he said.
The most dramatic case of a stray flying object entering Polish airspace came in late 2022 when a rocket crashed in Przewodów near the border with Ukraine, killing two farm workers.
Ukraine claimed it was a Russian rocket attacking Poland but a Polish and NATO investigation of the incident uncovered it had been part of Ukrainian air defences.
In late August this year former Polish president Andrzej Duda said Ukraine’s reaction was aimed at getting Poland to enter the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
Separately, Polish authorities have also reacted angrily to Belarus detaining a Polish monk on spying charges on September 3.
The Polish Government on September 5 said accusations that he had obtained documents on the coming Russian-Belarusian Zapad military exercises were “absurd”.
They claimed that he incident was staged as a “provocation” by the Lukashenko government and announced Poland would will take “retaliatory measures” against Minsk.
Belarusian authorities claim the monk, who comes from the Carmelite order’s monastery in Kraków and who was visiting a Polish priest working in the country, had collected information on military facilities on behalf of Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW).
They alleged that he contacted a Belarusian through social media, offering monthly payments as well as gifts such as coffee and chocolate in return for co-operation with the Polish security services.
The incident was “another provocation by the Lukashenko regime aimed at our country”, tweeted Jacek Dobrzyński, the spokesman for Poland’s security services.
He added: “Polish security services do not use monks to gather information about military exercises.”
