WARSAW: Poland said on Wednesday that a Russian military drone flew into its airspace and exploded in farmland in the east of the country overnight, calling it a “provocation”.

“Once again, we are facing a provocation from the Russian Federation, with a Russian drone,” Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz told reporters.

The explosion occurred in a cornfield near the village of Osiny some 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Warsaw and near the borders with Ukraine and Russian-allied Belarus. Officials said there were no casualties but the windows of some nearby houses were blown out.

The minister said it came at “a particular moment, where peace talks are underway, where there is hope that this war... has a chance to end. Russia provokes once again.” Poland has been a major supporter of Ukraine, hosts over a million Ukrainian refugees and is a key transit point for Western humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine. Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski condemned “a new violation of our airspace from the east”.

“The foreign ministry will protest to the perpetrator of this violation,” he wrote on X.

Polish media published a video showing an explosion during the night, and photos of debris including an engine and a propellor.

Polish general Dariusz Malinowski said the aircraft “was a decoy drone, which was not armed but carried a self-destruct warhead”.

Russian drones and missiles have crossed into the airspace of Nato members Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania several times in the three and a half years since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.

The latest incident comes less than a month after a Russian military drone flew into the Baltic state of Lithuania from Belarus.

The drone was spotted flying over parts of the capital Vilnius and was later found in a military training area. It had explosives on board that did not detonate.

The drone was believed to be a Russian drone model called Gerbera, which is often used as a decoy in multiple Russian drone and missile barrages against Ukraine.

Poland in 2023 said a Russian missile had crossed into its airspace to strike Ukraine.

And in November 2022, two civilians were killed when a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile fell on a village near the border.

“Russia has repeatedly violated Nato airspace, and this time Poland was the target... We must expand the operational capabilities of the Polish Armed Forces and anti-drone systems,” Kosiniak-Kamysz said.

The Polish army had earlier said that it had not detected any airspace violations overnight.

Poland has been on high alert for objects entering its airspace since a stray Ukrainian missile struck a southern Polish village in 2022, killing two people.

Deputy Prime Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, who also serves as defence minister, said the incident bore similarities to cases in which Russian drones flew into Lithuania and Romania, and could be linked to efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

“Once again, we are dealing with a provocation by the Russian Federation, with a Russian drone. We are dealing with it in a crucial moment, when discussions about peace (in Ukraine) are underway,” he told journalists.

Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on X his ministry would issue a protest against the airspace violation but did not name the perpetrator.

President Donald Trump met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and a group of European allies in the White House on Monday, following his meeting on Friday in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The blast shattered windows in several homes, but nobody was injured, national news agency PAP reported.

Police said they found burnt metal and plastic debris at the site and that corn had been burnt in an area of 8-10 m (26-33 ft) diameter around the spot where the object fell.

“I was sitting in my room at night, around midnight, maybe, and I heard something just bang,” local resident Pawel Sudowski told local news website Lukow.tv. “It exploded so loudly that the whole house simply shook.” Air raid sirens rang out for about an hour over the border in Ukraine’s Volyn and Lviv regions from around midnight local time (2100 GMT), according to messages from its military posted on Telegram. There were no reports of air attacks in those regions, their governors said.

Published in Dawn, August 21st, 2025