Poland accuses Russia over military drone blast

A display of Polish flags to mark Polish Army Day in Warsaw, Poland, on Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024. (Damian Lemanski/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Poland said on Wednesday that a Russian military drone flew into its airspace and exploded in farmland in the east of the country overnight, calling it a “provocation”.

“Once again, we are facing a provocation from the Russian Federation, with a Russian drone,” Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz told reporters.

The explosion occurred in a cornfield near the village of Osiny some 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Warsaw and near the borders with Ukraine and Russian-allied Belarus.

Officials said there were no casualties but the windows of some nearby houses were blown out.

The minister said it came at “a particular moment, where peace talks are underway, where there is hope that this war... has a chance to end. Russia provokes once again.”

Poland has been a major supporter of Ukraine, hosts over a million Ukrainian refugees and is a key transit point for Western humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine.

Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski condemned “a new violation of our airspace from the east”.

“The foreign ministry will protest to the perpetrator of this violation,” he wrote on X.

Polish media published a video showing an explosion during the night, and photos of debris including an engine and a propellor.

Polish general Dariusz Malinowski said the aircraft “was a decoy drone, which was not armed but carried a self-destruct warhead”.

Russian drones and missiles have crossed into the airspace of NATO members Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania several times in the three and a half years since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.

The latest incident comes less than a month after a Russian military drone flew into the Baltic state of Lithuania from Belarus.

The drone was spotted flying over parts of the capital Vilnius and was later found in a military training area. It had explosives on board that did not detonate.

The drone was believed to be a Russian drone model called Gerbera, which is often used as a decoy in multiple Russian drone and missile barrages against Ukraine.

Poland in 2023 said a Russian missile had crossed into its airspace to strike Ukraine.

And in November 2022, two civilians were killed when a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile fell on a village near the border.

“Russia has repeatedly violated NATO airspace, and this time Poland was the target... We must expand the operational capabilities of the Polish Armed Forces and anti-drone systems,” Kosiniak-Kamysz said.

The Polish army had earlier said that it had not detected any airspace violations overnight.