WARSAW — Poland will shoot down enemy aircraft if they violate its territory, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Monday.
“I want to be very clear. We will make a decision to shoot down flying objects without discussion when they violate our territory and fly over Poland. There is no room for debate here,” Tusk told a press conference.
Tusk’s made his comments in the wake of a series of incidents in which Russian drones or warplanes entered airspace of Poland, Romania, and, last Friday, Estonia, when three Russian MiG-31 jets remained in the NATO member state’s airspace for nearly 12 minutes before the alliance scrambled jets in response.
He added he wants to have “100 percent certainty” that Poland’s NATO allies will view any incursion in the same way, so that “if the conflict enters a very acute phase, we will not be alone.”
The incidents heightened security concerns along NATO’s eastern flank, triggering calls for increased vigilance against Russian provocations.
Following the incursion of 21 Russian drones into Poland earlier this month, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte announced the launch of the Eastern Sentry mission to bolster air defenses.
Poland is also considering more effective ways of neutralizing potential Russian incursions instead of scrambling fighter jets and using very expensive missiles to target cheap drones.
Tusk said that in more ambiguous situations — such as recent overflights of Russian fighter jets above Poland’s Petrobaltic drilling platform in the Baltic Sea outside of Poland’s territorial waters — any decision to react will need to be made very carefully.
“You need to think twice before deciding on actions that could trigger a very acute phase of the conflict,” he said.
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