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A Polish general said that a Russian drone crashed in Poland, despite the fact that air defenses were activated at night.
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He said that the authorities only received information about the drone crash in the morning.
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Civil servants said the drone probably had a Chinese engine and “very low” flew to prevent detection.
Warsaw said on Wednesday that a Russian drone crashed and exploded in a field in Oost -Poles, and that the loose -written system was only discovered the morning after air defenses were activated.
No one was injured, but the Minister of Defense of Poland, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, called the incident a provocation against NATO.
“Russia again provokes NATO -countries after drone incidents that have taken place in Romania, Lithuania, Latvia,” he said, and accused the Kremlin of 10 total airspace violations since 2022.
In a press conference, civil servants said that the drone probably went to the Polish airspace on Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning.
Gene. Dariusz Malinowski, deputy commander of Poland's armed forces Operational Command, said that air defenses were set alert that evening during one of the nightly drone and rocket waves of Russia against Ukraine.
Warsaw regularly activates his air defense along his border as a precaution during such attacks, especially after a lost Ukrainian defensive rocket in November 2022 killed two Polish citizens.
Malinowski said that the Polish air defenses were warned on Tuesday evening at 10 p.m., in addition to “standard measures that have been designed to seal our border.”
“The entire target detection system was activated. Moreover, the forces and resources for combating rockets were placed on the willingness to fight, and an MI -24 helicopter was also increased, which patroled the eastern part, the Ukrainian part of our border,” he said reporters.
The Polish army went off by midnight because it had not discovered any abnormalities or threats, Malinowski said.
“Nothing had happened that would show us that there was something unusual,” he said.
But the authorities found out in the morning that a drone had exploded in a corn field in Osiny, a village almost 70 miles from the border of Poland with Ukraine and about 400 miles from the mainland of Russia.
“This morning, after sunrise, we received information, as said here, about an object that exploded very close to łuków,” said Malinowski.
A secret Lokvogel Drone with Chinese parts
The general said that preliminary investigation indicated that the drone “flew very low” to prevent radar detection.
“This drone was designed in our assessment to be very difficult to detect, and that is indeed the case,” he said.
Malinowski, however, also said that it is still unclear whether the drone was deliberately flown in Poland. Nor is it immediately clear when the drone entered the Polish air space.
Authorities have not confirmed the flight route of the drone. A drone launched from mainland Russia should pass through Wit -Russia or Ukraine to enter Polish airspace.
Kaliningrad, a militarized Russian exclusion, is directly on the northern border of Poland, although it is unclear whether researchers think that the drone launch has come from the region.
Malinowski added that while search teams still collected the remains of the drone, the first proof indicated that it was equipped with a Chinese engine and a “self -destructive nuclear head”.
That could mean that the drone was a bait. Russia often implements the Shahed, a long-distance attack-drone designed by Iran. One of the locally produced versions, called the Gerbera, was designed to imitate the signature and appearance of the ammunition while wearing a much weaker core head.
Reuters called a spokesperson for the Polish Ministry of Defense and said that the crashed drone was a Russian version of the Shahed.
Ukrainian troops have long said that they often find Chinese parts in destroyed Russian-produced Shahed drones. European officials also say that some Russian and Chinese companies are actively working together on the Shahed, so that the Kremlin troops can greatly improve the attack opportunities of the ammunition.
The drone crash comes in the midst of already tense negotiations that the US is trying to mutate this month between Russia, Ukraine and Europe.
Radosław Sikorski, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, said on Wednesday in a statement that his country would “protest against the perpetrator.”
“Another violation of our airspace from the East confirms that the most important mission of Poland is compared to NATO to defend our own territory,” wrote Sikorski.
The Russian embassy in Warsaw, the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to comments requests sent by Business Insider outside the regular office hours.
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