Two unidentified aerial vehicles entered Polish airspace from the east and crashed on its territory without being detected by air defenses, Brussels Signal reported. One of the objects was found by border guards in a cornfield near the Terespol border crossing, close to Belarus. Initial checks found no explosives, and no one was injured. According to a spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense, the drone fell about 300 meters from the Polish-Belarusian border.

In a separate incident on September 6 in eastern Poland, remains of a drone without military markings were found, which authorities suspect was involved in smuggling. A local resident told Polstat News that Cyrillic inscriptions were found on the device. Polish investigators confirmed that Cyrillic text was also present on the drone found near Terespol.

The incidents occurred days after Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that the country would respond with force to any airspace violation. “Anyone who violates Poland’s airspace should expect an immediate response from the armed forces,” he said at a press conference in Łomża on September 5, cautioning that such provocations could have “very serious consequences,” including “kinetic action.”

General Wiesław Kukula, Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces, reported that drones had already twice violated Polish airspace on September 3, during Russian missile and drone strikes on Ukraine.

Opposition politicians criticized the government for a lack of protection against drones. Krzysztof Bosak of the Confederation said the government was clearly unprepared, while PiS deputy Jacek Sasin recalled criticisms of Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak from 2023, when a Russian missile was discovered in a Polish forest.

The most dramatic case so far occurred in 2022, when a missile crashed in Przewodów near the border with Ukraine, killing two farmers. Ukraine claimed it was a Russian attack, but investigations by Poland and NATO determined that the missile was part of Ukrainian air defense.

Separately, Poland reacted strongly to the detention of a Polish monk in Belarus on September 3 on espionage charges. Polish authorities called the allegations “absurd” and described the case as a “provocation” by the Lukashenko regime, announcing “retaliatory measures” against Minsk. Belarusian authorities accused the monk, who is from the Carmelite monastery in Kraków, of gathering information on military facilities for the Polish Internal Security Agency (ABW), offering monthly payments and gifts in exchange for cooperation.

Polish security services representative Jacek Dobżyński stated: “Polish security services do not use monks to gather information on military exercises. This is yet another provocation by the Lukashenko regime against our country.” | BGNES