Poland warns that Russia plans attacks on Kyiv’s allies: “Real Risk”

“ O russian plan, according to assessments of information services, includes hybrid drone and missile attacks against countries supporting Ukraine, including Poland,” said the Polish leader in a speech in parliament.

In his speech, the head of the government warned “a real risk” that Russian drones “may fall into the territory of one or more countries on the eastern border of NATO” and that the “official narrative” of the Kremlin would justify “it was an accident”.

Russia’s goal is to “weaken the general cohesion of NATO” and convince member states that Article 5 of the Atlantic Alliance treaty on mutual protection “is more theoretical than practical,” Tusk continued.

The Prime Minister's speech comes on the day that thousands of students from various schools and government building officials, including the city council of Rzeszów, in the east of the country, were removed following a Russian air strike alert near the border between Ukraine and Poland, only about a hundred kilometres from this city of 200,000 inhabitants

According to the Government Security Center, residents of the eastern provinces of Lublin and Subcarpatia received a message on their mobile phones warning them of an “air attack”.

The message asked the inhabitants to “seek a safe place and follow the instructions of the authorities” due to a drone attack by Russia near the Dorohusk-Yahodyn border crossing.

Last weekend, the alarm spread through Poland after several Russian drone attacks in western Ukraine, a few miles from the border.

One drone struck one train and another hit a gas station near the Dorohusk border crossing, which had to be evacuated.

Prior to his intervention in parliament, the Polish Prime Minister had already held Russia responsible for large-scale attacks very close to the Polish border.

Upon receiving the Austrian Chancellor, Christian Stocker, Tusk condemned “a massive and brutal Russian attack” in western Ukraine, very close to the Polish border and warned of the risk of “naïveness” towards Moscow.

The Prime Minister reported that Polish fighters carried out “emergency schooling, as happened two days ago and yesterday [Wednesday] at night,” referring to recent air surveillance missions along the border with Ukraine.

Shortly before his meeting with the Austrian Chancellor, the Polish government's head released a video on the X network allusive to the 87th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, but referring to Russia's current threat: “We do not seek war, but if someone starts it, we will know how to defend us,” he said.

Tusk argued that security should be the absolute priority in the European Union budget for the period 2028-2034 and declared its intention to prepare its country and make it a net contributor to address this threat.

The Polish Prime Minister has a trip to Ukraine on Friday.

Poland, a member of NATO and the European Union, borders Ukraine, Belarus (Moscow ally) and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

Warsaw diplomacy has accused Moscow of “sabotage” on several occasions since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and has welcomed more than one million Ukrainian refugees.

Its territory is the main transit route of Western military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.