WARSAW: Poland gathered its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies for urgent talks on Wednesday (Sep 10) after Russian drones flew into Polish airspace during an attack on Ukraine, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said, warning that the situation was inching closer to “open conflict”.
Poland’s airspace was violated 19 times, Tusk said, and at least three drones were shot down after Warsaw and its allies scrambled jets – but authorities said nobody was harmed.
Footage posted by local media showed firefighters and police in the village of Wyryki, eastern Poland, inspecting a house with its roof ripped open and debris littered nearby following an impact from a drone.
Russian drones and missiles have entered the airspace of NATO members, including Poland, several times during Russia’s three-and-a-half-year war in Ukraine, 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” is at risk – only the eighth time the measure has ever been used.
“This situation brings us the closest we have been to open conflict since World War II,” Tusk told parliament, but added there was “no reason today to claim that we are in a state of war”.
The incident came as Russia unleashed a barrage of strikes across Ukraine, including in the western city of Lviv, less than two hours’ drive from the Polish border.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the airspace violation was a “dangerous precedent” for Europe and “no accident”, and urged a strong response from Kyiv’s Western allies.
Poland’s interior ministry said 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 to hold it under Article 4 of the treaty.
A cornerstone of the Western military alliance is the principle that an attack on any member is deemed an attack on all.
NATO chief Mark Rutte hailed his organisation’s “very successful reaction”, telling journalists the alliance’s air defences had done their job.
He slammed Moscow’s “reckless behaviour” and called on Putin to halt a war that he said was now being waged on civilians.
Russia’s defence ministry denied targeting Poland, saying they were ready to talk with Warsaw.
“There were no intentions to engage any targets on the territory of Poland,” the ministry said in a statement in English, without confirming or denying that its drones had entered Polish airspace.
