NATO’s top leaders announced new efforts on Friday to step up air defenses in the alliance’s eastern flank after Russian drones that flew into Poland this week revealed how easily the war in Ukraine could spill over borders.
Increased air patrols, ground-based interceptor systems, sensors and heightened surveillance will be mobilized, officials said. The military operation, called Eastern Sentry, will initially focus on Poland but can be shifted elsewhere in the region as needed.
“Russia’s recklessness in the air along our eastern flank is increasing in frequency,” said NATO’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, who added that adversarial drones also have recently violated the airspace of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania.
It remains unclear why the Russian drones entered Poland shortly after midnight on Wednesday, Mr. Rutte said, but “whether intentional or not, it is dangerous and unacceptable.”
Britain, Denmark, France and Germany pledged to send forces and equipment for the operation, which U.S. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, the alliance’s top military commander, said would begin immediately. It will also include technology designed to counter drones.
The U.N. Security Council was set to meet later Friday in New York to discuss the violation of Poland’s airspace. Officials have said around 20 drones flew into Poland, prompting NATO, a mutual-defense alliance, to scramble warplanes to shoot them down.
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