Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has pledged to push ahead with a “great modernisation programme” for his country’s military, a day after Polish and NATO forces shot down drones violating the country’s airspace during a Russian aerial attack on neighbouring Ukraine.
The Polish Air Navigation Services Agency announced on Thursday that Poland had introduced air traffic restrictions along its eastern borders with Belarus and Ukraine. It said the step was taken at the request of the Polish army for national security reasons, but did not elaborate.
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The restrictions will apply until December 9, Polish air traffic authorities said. Under the rules, civilian unmanned aircraft, such as drones, are banned; general aviation – mainly small and recreational aircraft and helicopters – can operate during the day provided they have a radio and transponder, but cannot fly at night.
Tusk said on Wednesday that the drone incursion incident was “the closest we have been to open conflict since World War II,” though he also said he had “no reason to believe we’re on the brink of war”.
European officials described Wednesday’s incursion, which occurred during a wave of recent relentless Russian strikes on Ukraine, as a deliberate provocation, forcing the NATO alliance to confront a potential threat in its airspace for the first time. Neither Poland nor NATO has yet given a full account of what they suspect the drones were doing.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pushed Kyiv’s allies on Thursday for a tougher response to the incursion into Poland, saying the move was likely aimed at slowing supplies of air defences to Ukraine ahead of this winter.
Zelenskyy, speaking at a briefing in Kyiv alongside Finnish President Alexander Stubb, also urged allies to rethink their own air defence capabilities, adding that missile-based systems are too expensive to use against cheaper drones.
For his part, Stubb accused Hungary and Slovakia of funding the Kremlin’s “war machine” by buying Russian oil and gas, in one of his sharpest rebukes yet of his fellow European Union members.
Stubb also said the crossing of Russian drones into Poland showed Moscow was “seeking escalation” with NATO and that Europe needed to put further pressure on Russia.
“As far as getting our own house in order, I think [US] President [Donald] Trump, when he says that Europe needs to stop buying Russian oil and gas, is right,” Stubb told reporters.
“The finger points in two places. One is Hungary and the other one is Slovakia. And, of course, we make sure that President Trump is aware of who is feeding the Russian war machine by buying Russian energy,” he added.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Slovakia’s Robert Fico have both criticised European aid for Ukraine and sought closer ties with Russia, to the frustration of Brussels.
Poland said some of the drones that entered its airspace on Wednesday came from Belarus, where Russian and local troops have begun gathering for war games scheduled to start on Friday. Poland is closing its border with Belarus at midnight on Thursday, a planned move also associated with the military exercises.
Underscoring the global repercussions of the war, China on Thursday urged Poland to keep open a section of the Belarus border for a China-EU freight track that crosses it. The rail line is part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative to boost trade with other countries.
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Tusk addressed Polish troops at an airbase in the central city of Lask, praising their quick action and that of NATO allied forces from the Netherlands that responded to the Russian drone incursions.
Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel announced on Thursday that his government had summoned Russia’s ambassador to the Netherlands over the incident.
Polish President Karol Nawrocki, meanwhile, visited the Poznan-Krzesiny base in western Poland on Thursday and struck a defiant tone. Poland “doesn’t get scared by Russian drones”, he said in a statement.
Nawrocki described the incursion as “an attempt to test our abilities, the ability to react”.
He was also due to convene Poland’s national security council, which advises him on security threats.
The Kremlin said it had nothing to add to a statement on Wednesday by Russia’s Defence Ministry, which insisted that Russian forces had not targeted Poland and that it was open to discussing the incident with Polish officials.
It also dismissed talk of the incursion being a provocation. “The statements we hear from Warsaw: well, they’re nothing new. This rhetoric is typical of almost all European capitals,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
The United Nations Security Council has scheduled an emergency meeting on the drone incursion on Friday afternoon at Poland’s request.
Polish airspace has been violated many times since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but never on this scale in Poland or anywhere else in NATO territory. Wednesday’s incident was the first time a NATO member is known to have fired shots during Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Russian drone attacks on civilian areas are daily occurrences in Ukraine. The Ukrainian military has successfully developed drones to combat the attacks, called interceptors.
The Ukrainian air force said on Thursday its forces intercepted 62 out of 66 Russian strike and decoy drones in the country’s airspace overnight.
In the city of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, Russian drones and debris from those intercepted damaged an educational facility, apartment blocks and the landmark Holy Resurrection Cathedral, regional head Oleh Hryhorov wrote on Telegram.
