Poland shoots down Russian drones violating its airspace. A Russian airstrike kills 25 in Yarova as people queue for pensions. The EU will enter into drone alliance with Ukraine and front-load EUR 6 billion.
Poland shoots down Russian drones violating its airspace
Multiple Russian drones violated Polish airspace during an attack on neighboring Ukraine early on Wednesday. The Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces said it had detected drones in its airspace as a result of a Russian attack on Ukraine. The Polish military said that its airspace has been “repeatedly violated by drone-type objects” and that an operation was under way to identify and neutralize them.
“Polish and allied [military] resources observed a dozen objects on the radar, and for those that could pose a threat, the operational commander decided to neutralize them,” the Operational Command said.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told parliament on Wednesday that 19 objects had entered its airspace during a large Russian air attack on Ukraine overnight, with many originating from Belarus. According to Reuters, Tusk said the shooting down of three drones had been confirmed, and it was likely a fourth had been downed. The last drone was downed at 6:45 local time, it said.
Poland asked NATO to open consultations under Article 4 of its treaty, which states that members of the Western military alliance will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territory, political independence or security of any of them is threatened.
“The fact that these drones, which posed a security threat, were shot down changes the political situation. Therefore, allied consultations took the form of a formal request to activate Article 4 of the NATO Treaty,” Tusk said.
Poland has asked allies for additional air defense systems and counter-drone technology to better protect its land from Russian incursions, Bloomberg News said, citing people familiar with the matter.
“I have no reason to claim we’re on the brink of war, but a line has been crossed, and it’s incomparably more dangerous than before,” Tusk said. “This situation brings us the closest we have been to open conflict since World War Two,” he added, according to Reuters.
A source told Reuters NATO was not treating the incident as an attack but as an intentional incursion. “The North Atlantic Council met this morning and discussed the situation in light of Poland’s request for consultations under Article 4 of the Washington Treaty,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said Wednesday.
Ukraine’s Air Force said at least eight Russian drones violated Polish airspace during an attack on Wednesday as Russia launched 415 drones and 43 missiles at Ukraine overnight.
A drone or similar object struck a residential building in Wyryki in eastern Poland but nobody was injured, the local mayor told state-run news channel TVP Info. Elsewhere in the eastern Lublin region, police said they found a damaged drone in the village of Czosnowka.
Warsaw ordered its territorial defense forces in several regions on higher alert and called an emergency government meeting in response to the incident.
NATO’s Rutte offered his reaction to the overnight incident in Poland. He said that “the full assessment is on-going,” but stressed that “whether it was intentionally or not, it is absolutely, reckless, it is absolutely dangerous.”
When asked if he has any particular message for Putin about this incident, Rutte said: “And to Putin my message is clear: stop the war in Ukraine. Stop the escalating war, which he is now basically mounting on innocent civilians and civilian infrastructure. Stop violating Allied airspace. And know that we stand ready, that we are vigilant, and that we will defend every inch of NATO territory.”
Russian airstrike kills 25 in Yarova as people queue for pensions
A Russian aerial bomb attack on Tuesday killed at least 25 people and wounded 19 others in the village of Yarova in Donetsk region, according to Ukrainian officials. The victims were struck as they were collecting pensions from a car of Ukraine’s postal service.
As of Tuesday evening, 20 remains were identified and belong to 15 women ages 54 to 79, and to nine men ages 53 to 87, the Donetsk regional police office said. Efforts to identify the rest of the victims are underway.
Yarova sits less than 10 kilometers from the frontline. According to local authorities, around 500 people continue to live there.
Russia’s attacks on Tuesday killed another two civilians in Kostyantynivka and one person in Semenivka, head of the Donetsk regional military administration Vadym Filashkin said in a post to social media on Wednesday.
EU to enter into drone alliance with Ukraine, front-load EUR 6 billion
The EU will enter into a so-called Drone Alliance with Ukraine and front-load EUR 6 billion, using proceeds from the frozen Russian assets under the G7-led Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration (ERA), European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told European lawmakers in her State of the Union address Wednesday morning.
She pointed to Ukraine’s drone-warfare advance, having gone from few such weapons to unmanned systems now accounting for over two-thirds of Russian equipment losses on the battlefield
“That is not just an edge on the battlefield. It is a reminder of the power of human ingenuity in our open societies,” von der Leyen said.
At the same time, Russia is catching up fast, mass producing Iranian-designed Shahed drones.
“Ingenuity helped to open a door for Ukraine’s defence. But raw industrial might, on the other side may threaten to sweep it closed,” she continued.
“So we can use our industrial strength to support Ukraine to counter this drone warfare. We can help transform Ukrainian ingenuity into battlefield advantage – and into joint industrialisation. This is why I can also announce that Europe will frontload €6 billion from the ERA loan and enter into a Drone Alliance with Ukraine,” von der Leyen said.
“Ukraine has the ingenuity. What it needs now is scale. And together, we can provide it: so that Ukraine keeps its edge, and Europe strengthens its own,” she added.
