Authorities in Poland have said that two Belarusian citizens were detained and a drone was “neutralised” after it was flown over government buildings and the presidential residence in the capital city, Warsaw.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said early on Tuesday that members of the country’s State Protection Services apprehended the two Belarusians, and police were “investigating the circumstances of the incident”.
The Associated Press news agency quoted Colonel Boguslaw Piorkowski, a spokesperson for the protection service, saying that the drone was not shot down by Polish forces but landed after authorities apprehended the operators.
“The impression is that this is not something that flew in from abroad but rather launched locally,” Katarzyna Pelczynska-Nalecz, Poland’s minister of development funds and regional policy, told local media outlet TVN 24, according to the AP.
The minister also advised the public against rushing to conclusions or associating the incident with last week’s high-profile incursion by multiple Russian drones into Polish airspace during an aerial attack on neighbouring Ukraine, the AP reported.
Przed chwilą Służba Ochrony Państwa zneutralizowała drona operującego nad budynkami rządowymi (Parkowa) i Belwederem. Zatrzymano dwóch obywateli Białorusi. Policja bada okoliczności incydentu.
— Donald Tusk (@donaldtusk) September 15, 2025
Translation: Just now, the State Protection Service neutralised a drone operating over government buildings (Parkowa) and the Belweder. Two Belarusian citizens were detained. The police are investigating the circumstances of the incident.
The reported arrest of the Belarusian drone operators by Polish authorities comes as thousands of troops from Belarus and Russia take part in the “Zapad (West) 2025” military drills, which kicked off on Friday and are due to end on Tuesday.
Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, which border Belarus, closed their frontier crossings and bolstered defences in advance of the exercises, which authorities in Minsk said involve 6,000 soldiers from Belarus and 1,000 from Russia.
Poland is also on high alert after last week’s Russian drone incursions, which led to Polish and NATO fighter jets mobilising to defend against what was described as an “unprecedented violation of Polish airspace” by Moscow.
Polish F-16 and Dutch F-35 fighter jets, as well as Italian AWACS surveillance planes, deployed to counter the drones, marking the first time that NATO-allied forces have engaged Russian military assets since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
One of the drones damaged a residential building in Wyryki, eastern Poland, though nobody was reported injured, according to the Reuters news agency.
On Friday, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte announced that the Western military alliance would increase its defence “posture” in Eastern Europe following the Polish airspace violation.
Operation “Eastern Sentry” will include military assets from a range of NATO members, including Denmark, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, Rutte said, describing the incursion as “reckless” and “unacceptable”.
Amid the increased tension with Russia, NATO member Romania also reported a drone incursion on Saturday, which led to the scrambling of two F-16 fighter jets as well as two Eurofighters and a warning to Romanian citizens to take cover.
Romanian Minister of National Defence Ionut Mosteanu said the fighter jets came close to shooting down the drone before it exited Romanian airspace into neighbouring Ukraine.
Moscow’s ambassador to Romania was summoned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday, where Bucharest “conveyed its strong protest against this unacceptable and irresponsible act, which constitutes a violation of [its] sovereignty”.
Russia was “urgently requested… to prevent any future violations”, the Romanian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
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