Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said the country is closer to military conflict “than at any time since the second world war” as Warsaw and Nato allies weighed a response to an incursion of Russian drones into Polish airspace.
Poland scrambled its own and Nato air defences, shooting down at least three drones, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine spread to Nato territory early on Wednesday in the most significant way since the full-scale invasion more than three years ago.
In the aftermath, Warsaw said Nato allies had made concrete proposals to bolster the country’s air defences. The UK is considering deploying Typhoon jets as part of an enhanced air policing mission to protect the alliance’s eastern flank.
There had been at least 19 violations of Polish airspace overnight, said Tusk, and some of them had entered Poland from Belarusian territory. Four Polish airports, including the two that serve Warsaw, were closed to traffic during the incursion. The prime minister of the Netherlands, Dick Schoof, said F-35 jets from his country took part in the mission to intercept the drones. At least three drones were shot down.
Tusk, who convened an emergency cabinet meeting on Wednesday morning, said: “We are dealing with a large-scale provocation … We are ready to repel such provocations. The situation is serious and no one doubts that we must prepare for various scenarios.”
On social media, Donald Trump posted: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!”
The White House said Trump would speak to Poland’s newly elected nationalist president, Karol Nawrocki, while the US ambassador to Nato, Matthew Whitaker, reiterated backing for Warsaw amid concerns in Europe over how the Trump administration might respond to a Russian attack on Nato. “We stand by our Nato allies in the face of these airspace violations and will defend every inch of Nato territory,” wrote Whitaker in a post on X.
The British defence secretary, John Healey, said he had asked the UK armed forces to look at “options to bolster Nato’s air defence over Poland”. He was speaking after an E5 meeting of ministers from France, Germany, the UK, Italy and Poland, which his Polish counterpart had left early to return home due to the drone incursion.
Healey said: “Today, as five nations, we say to President Putin: your aggression only serves to strengthen the unity between our Nato nations; your aggression only serves to strengthen our determination to stand with Ukraine.”
Russia launches almost nightly attacks on Ukraine using large, kamikaze drones based on an Iranian design and known informally as “Shaheds”. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Wednesday morning that 415 drones and 40 missiles had been used in the overnight attack, most targeting western parts of the country. One person was killed in Zhytomyr region.
Zelenskyy urged Nato countries to launch a strong response to the incursion into Poland. “Moscow is always testing the limits of the possible, and if it does not meet a strong reaction, moves to a new level of escalation,” Zelenskyy wrote in a post on social media. “Today was another escalatory step … Not one ‘Shahed’, which could have been called an accident, but at least eight attack drones which targeted Poland.”
Russia’s defence ministry released a statement saying Moscow had “no intentions to engage any targets on the territory of Poland”, without confirming or denying that its drones had entered Polish airspace. “We are ready to hold consultations on this subject with the Polish defence ministry,” it added.
Russia’s chargé d’affaires in Poland, Andrei Ordash, called the accusations against Moscow groundless, saying “no evidence has been presented proving these drones are of Russian origin”.
Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, said Warsaw had “no doubt” that it was dealing with a deliberate attack. “When one or two drones does it, it is possible that it was a technical malfunction, but … in this case there were 19 breaches, and it simply defies imagination that that could be accidental,” he said.
Other Polish and European officials agreed, saying the number of drones that entered Polish airspace made it unlikely to be an accident. One of the drones damaged a building on the ground in eastern Poland but there were no reports of casualties.
Tusk insisted there was “no reason to panic”, but said Poland had invoked Nato’s article 4, requesting formal consultations with the alliance. Article 4 has been invoked only seven times since Nato was created in 1949, with the last time in 2022 in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Andriy Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, called on neighbouring countries to shoot down Russian missiles and drones over Ukrainian airspace, especially in the western regions of the country close to the border with Nato nations. “Ukraine has suggested such a step for a long time. It needs to be taken for the sake of collective security,” he said.
Up to now Ukraine’s neighbours have declined to do so, fearing the escalatory potential of directly engaging with Russian missiles and drones.
Russia and Belarus will hold a big military drill on Friday known as Zapad, which has raised security concerns in the region and led to Poland closing all its land borders with Belarus.
Trump came into office promising a swift end to the war, but has proved unable to persuade Putin to agree a ceasefire. A bilateral summit in Alaska last month yielded few results and Kyiv hopes Trump will put pressure on Moscow after deadlines set by the White House for Russia were ignored. Earlier this week, an Iskander cruise missile hit the cabinet of ministers, a key government building in Kyiv.
Wednesday’s incursion into Poland was the first reported occasion when Nato defence forces had directly engaged Russian drones. Poland has been on alert for craft entering its airspace since a stray Ukrainian missile struck a southern Polish village in 2022, killing two people.
During the drone attack, the Polish authorities closed several airports, including Chopin airport in Warsaw, the country’s largest, and the key logistics and arms transfer hub in the south-eastern city of Rzeszów. Early morning departures were delayed for several hours and a number of arriving flights were diverted to other Polish airports. An Air China plane from Beijing due to land at Chopin was sent to Copenhagen.
