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Poland calls urgent NATO talks after Russian drone incursion
Poland gathered its NATO allies for urgent talks on Wednesday, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said, after Russian drones flew into Polish airspace in an overnight attack on Ukraine.
Tusk denounced the "large-scale provocation", saying Poland had identified 19 violations of its airspace and shot down at least three drones after scrambling aircraft alongside allies, adding that no one was harmed.
Russian drones and missiles have entered the airspace of NATO members -- including Poland -- several times during Russia's three-and-a-half-year war, but a NATO country has never attempted to shoot them down.
Tusk said he had invoked NATO's Article 4 under which any member can call urgent talks when it feels its "territorial integrity, political independence or security" are at risk -- only the eighth time the measure has ever been used.
The incursion came as Russia unleashed a barrage of strikes across Ukraine, including in the western city of Lviv, around 50 miles (80 kilometres) from the Polish border.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on social media that the airspace violation was a "dangerous precedent" for Europe, saying it was "no accident", and urged a strong response from Kyiv's Western allies.
Poland's interior ministry said that a house and a car had been damaged overnight, adding that seven drones and debris from an unknown projectile had so far been located.
The North Atlantic Council, NATO's main political decision-making body, changed the format of its weekly meeting on Wednesday, holding it under Article 4 of the alliance treaty.
A cornerstone of the Western military alliance is the principle that an attack on any member is deemed an attack on all.
- 'Act of aggression' -
Russia's top diplomat in Poland, Andrei Ordash, told RIA Novosti he had been summoned to the foreign ministry for a meeting at noon (1000 GMT).
He said Warsaw was yet to show evidence that the drones shot down overnight had come from Russia.
The operational command of Poland's military said the airspace violations were "unprecedented" and called it "an act of aggression".
A senior NATO diplomat, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the incursion was "not seen as the start of something bigger".
"There was no word on whether this was intentional –- it looks like it was either aimed at testing NATO or could have been the aim was to approach targets in Ukraine from a different angle," the diplomat said.
The response from NATO would probably be "shifting a few extra assets" to Poland or elsewhere in the east, and pushing a "tough line" from the NATO secretary general.
Zelensky said the attack was an attempt to "humiliate" Poland.
"Russia must feel that the response to this escalatory step, and even more so to an attempt to humiliate one of Europe's key countries, will be clear and strong from all partners," Zelensky said.
Polish authorities had temporarily closed the airspace over part of the country following the incident.
It came a day after Poland's newly elected nationalist President Karol Nawrocki warned that Putin was ready to invade more countries after launching his war in Ukraine.
"We do not trust Vladimir Putin's good intentions," Nawrocki told reporters Tuesday. "We believe that Vladimir Putin is ready to also invade other countries."
Poland, a major supporter of Ukraine, hosts over a million Ukrainian refugees and is a key transit point for Western humanitarian and military aid to the war-torn country.
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Y. Rousseau--BTZ
