An emergency session of the UN security council will convene on Friday at Poland’s request as Warsaw seeks to rally support after an incursion into the country by Russian drones on Wednesday.
Numerous European allies pledged support for Poland, including a promise by Germany to strengthen its military presence on Nato’s eastern flank, but some disputed whether the incursion was a deliberate attack on Poland by Russia and Donald Trump offered little in the way of public support.
On Thursday, the US president told reporters the incursion could have been a “mistake”, adding “I’m not happy about anything to do with the whole situation, but hopefully that’s going to come to an end.”
In response, Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, wrote on X “No, that wasn’t a mistake.”
Earlier, Sikorski told local radio Poland planned to use the security council meeting to “draw the world’s attention to this unprecedented Russian drone attack on a member of the UN, EU and Nato”.
He added that Polish authorities had no doubt the act was deliberate. “Nineteen violations of our airspace, several dozen drones identified, a few shot down, the action lasting seven hours, the whole night – so we cannot say it was an accident,” he said.
Drone fragments were found more than 300 miles inside Polish borders, and the incident marked the first time Nato forces have engaged Russian drones. Sikorski and his Ukrainian and Lithuanian counterparts issued a statement calling the incursion a “deliberate and coordinated attack” and an “unprecedented provocation”.
However, Alexus Grynkewich, Nato’s supreme allied commander Europe, said at a briefing on Thursday that it was unclear whether the incursion was deliberate. “We do not yet know if this was an intentional act or an unintentional act,” he said. He added that he had “low confidence” in Poland’s claims about the number of drones.
“I would not be able to tell you with any confidence today that it was 20 or that it was 10. We just have to get into the technical details to figure that out, to debrief the crews that were up see what they saw,” he said.
Russia has claimed its drones were not targeting Poland, but the defence ministry did not confirm or deny Russian drones were involved. On Thursday, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said Russia would make no further comment on the incident.
Several European countries summoned their Russian ambassadors in response to the incident. Sweden’s foreign minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard, said after meeting the Russian ambassador in Stockholm: “The Russian violations are unacceptable and constitute a threat to Europe’s security.”
The German chancellery said it would intensify its support for Ukraine and double to four the number of fighter jets it has delegated to a Nato programme to police the skies around the alliance’s eastern borders.
Trump’s initial response was ambiguous. “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!” he wrote on social media, without condemning the attack.
Late on Wednesday, Poland’s nationalist president, Karol Nawrocki, who visited Trump in the White House last week, said that he and Trump had spoken by phone and “confirmed allied unity”.
The US ambassador to Nato, Matthew Whitaker, offered a more reassuring message for Warsaw. “We stand by our Nato allies in the face of these airspace violations and will defend every inch of Nato territory,” he wrote on X.
Trump’s envoy, Keith Kellogg, arrived in Kyiv on Thursday afternoon for a visit that was expected to include consultations with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Kellogg is considered to be among the most pro-Kyiv voices on Trump’s team but often seems to be playing a secondary role to Steve Witkoff, a real estate lawyer and another envoy who has met Putin several times and has apparently developed warm relations with the Russian leader. Witkoff has not yet visited Ukraine.
Since Putin and Trump met in Alaska last month, Russia has continued almost nightly air assaults on Ukraine and there is little sign that a ceasefire or peace deal is on the horizon. Many in Europe see the incursion into Poland as Russia testing the limits of Nato solidarity under Trump. Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said the incident brought Poland closer to military conflict “than at any time since the second world war”.
On Thursday morning, Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, arrived by train to Kyiv, where he was due to meet with Zelenskyy. Stubb has a good relationship with the US president and has emerged as a key link in the European effort to keep Trump onside in support for Ukraine.
In Poland, Tusk and Nawrocki addressed troops after the incursion.
Tusk visited an airbase in the city of Łask and praised the air force for its quick response. He said a “great modernisation programme” for Poland’s military forces, already announced, would be even more important after the incursion, and said Poland should receive the first delivery of F-35 fighter jets from the US next year, part of a package of 32 aircraft in a long-agreed deal.
“We hope that the Americans will meet the deadlines. We would like the first batch of the F-35s to reach you in May, and so that we can speak of our air power with increasing confidence from month to month, and from year to year. And that Poland is truly safe from the sky,” Tusk told the troops.
As a precaution, Poland said it was closing air traffic in the eastern part of the country, close to the borders with Russia and Ukraine, to civil flights until 9 December. The country’s air traffic control agency said the measure was “to assure national security”. Airspace over Ukraine has been closed to civil flights since the full-scale invasion in February 2022, while Ukrainian drone attacks in recent months have regularly forced Russian airports to close.
Poland said some of the drones that entered its airspace came from Belarusian territory, where Russian and local troops are preparing to begin major military exercises on Friday.
