Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, has said last week’s Russian drone incursion into Polish airspace was an attempt by the Kremlin to test Nato’s reactions by incremental escalations without prompting a full-scale response.
Mr Sikorski confirmed that while the drones used in the incursion were capable of carrying ammunition, those that reached Poland were not loaded with explosives.
“Interestingly, they were all duds, which suggests to me that Russia tried to test us without starting a war,” Mr Sikorski told the Guardian in Kyiv.
He dismissed suggestions that Polish air defences had been unprepared for the incursion, given the fact some of the drones travelled hundreds of miles into Polish territory, and that accounts suggest only three or four out of about 19 were shot down.
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“The drones didn’t reach their targets and there was minor damage to property, nobody was hurt. If it happened in Ukraine, by Ukrainian definitions, that would be regarded as a 100% success,” he said.
Nato announced on Friday that it will deploy more jets to the alliance’s eastern flank to protect against future drone attacks.
On Saturday, Polish and allied aircraft were again deployed due to a renewed threat of drone strikes in western Ukraine. The airport in the eastern city of Lublin was closed and residents of border areas received SMS alerts to exercise caution. However, there was no reported incursion this time.
Mr Sikorski said the Polish response would have been “much tougher” if last week’s attack had caused injuries or deaths in its territory, but declined to elaborate on how such a response might look in a future hypothetical scenario. “With an aggressor and a liar like Putin, only the toughest counter pressures work,” he said.
Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, last week said the incursion had brought his country closer to military conflict “than at any time since the second World War”.
Mr Sikorski rejected the suggestion by Donald Trump that “it could have been a mistake”, saying too many drones were involved. “You can believe that one or two veer off target, but 19 mistakes in one night, over seven hours, sorry, I don’t believe it,” he said.
Romania scrambled fighter jets on Saturday when a drone breached the country’s airspace during a Russian attack on Ukrainian infrastructure near the border, the defence ministry said.
Defence minister Ionut Mosteanu said the F-16 pilots came close to taking down the drone as it was flying very low before it left national airspace toward Ukraine.
Romania, a European Union and Nato state that shares a 650km (400-mile) border with Ukraine, has had Russian drone fragments fall on to its territory repeatedly since Russia began waging war on its neighbour.
On Saturday, it scrambled two F-16 fighter jets and later two Eurofighters – part of German air policing missions in Romania – and warned citizens in the southeastern county of Tulcea near the Danube and its Ukrainian border to take cover, the defence ministry said in a statement.
It added the jets detected a drone in national airspace, which they followed until it dropped off the radar 20km southwest of the village of Chilia Veche.
Mr Mosteanu said helicopters will survey the area near the border to look for potential drone parts, “but all information at this moment indicates the drone exited airspace to Ukraine”.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on X that data showed the drone breached about 10km into Romanian territory and operated in Nato airspace for around 50 minutes.
“It is an obvious expansion of the war by Russia – and this is exactly how they act,” he said. “Sanctions against Russia are needed. Tariffs against Russian trade are needed. Collective defence is needed.”
Romanian lawmakers approved a law earlier this year enabling the army to shoot down drones illegally breaching Romanian airspace during peacetime, based on threat levels and risks to human life and property, but the Bill does not yet have all enforcement rules approved.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian drones attacked the Kirishi oil refinery in Russia’s northwest, one of the country’s biggest, sparking a fire when debris fell from a shot-down drone, Russian officials said on Sunday.
Surgutneftegaz’s Kirishinefteorgsintez refinery, one of the top two refineries in Russia, was attacked by Ukrainian drones, Russian officials said.
Alexander Drozdenko, the governor of the Leningrad region, said that three drones were destroyed in the Kirishi area and that a fire sparked by falling debris had been put out. He said no one was injured.
Ukraine’s drone command confirmed it attacked the refinery and said it had “carried out a successful strike”.
Reuters was unable to immediately verify the scale of the damage, if any, to the refinery. – Reuters
