Polish and allied aircraft were deployed early on Saturday to ensure the safety of Polish airspace after Russia launched air strikes targeting western Ukraine near the border with Poland, armed forces of the NATO-member country said.
“Polish and allied aircraft are operating in our airspace, while ground-based air defence and radar reconnaissance systems have been brought to the highest state of readiness,” the operational command said in a post on X.
At 0340 GMT, nearly all of Ukraine was under air raid alerts following Ukrainian Air Force warnings of Russian missile and drone attacks.
The deployment of aircraft follows a recent suspected Russian drone incursion in the region.
Last week, Poland said that at least 19 drones crossed into Polish airspace when Russia was attacking Ukraine. Russia, however, said the incursion was not deliberate.
‘Unprecedentedly brazen’ airspace violations
Earlier, Poland’s border guards had reported that two Russian fighter jets breached the safety zone of a Polish drilling platform in the Baltic Sea on Friday.
“Two Russian fighter jets performed a low pass over the Petrobaltic platform in the Baltic Sea. The platform's safety zone was violated,” the Polish Border Guard said on X.
It added that the armed forces and other services were immediately notified of the incident.
The violation came the same day Estonia reported that three Russian MiG-31 jets had entered its airspace for 12 minutes in what it described as an “unprecedentedly brazen” incursion.
NATO fighters responded and forced the aircraft to withdraw.
Russian strikes kill 1, wound 13: Ukraine
Ukrainian officials said on Saturday that Russian overnight strikes in the Dnipropetrovsk region had killed one person and wounded 13, as several regions reported major attacks.
Sergiy Lysak, the head of the regional military administration, said Russian forces had struck with drones and missiles, damaging residential buildings and sparking fires.
The strikes killed one person and wounded 13, with one man in a serious condition, Lysak said on the Telegram platform.
Ukraine issued a nationwide air alert, with officials reporting other strikes in the region around the capital Kiev.
Russian officials, meanwhile, said their forces had repelled “massive” Ukrainian attacks in the Volgograd and Rostov regions, while one person was wounded in the nearby region of Saratov.
