Poland rejects Trump’s suggestion that Russia’s drone raid “could have been a mistake”

Warsaw — Poland’s most senior officials on Friday dismissed President Trump’s suggestion that a major Russian drone incursion into Polish airspace could have been a mistake by Vladimir Putin’s military.

“We would also wish that the drone attack on Poland was a mistake. But it wasn’t. And we know it,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in a message posted on social media.

Polish authorities said they had recovered parts of 17 Russian-made drones, which fell without causing any injuries or major damage in the east of the country on Wednesday.

Polish and allied NATO fighter jets from Holland were scrambled to intercept the drones — a first such response to aerial Russian military incursions into NATO airspace since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago.

Poland’s relatively new, conservative President Karol Nawrocki, in a social media post on Thursday, called the Russian drone incursion “nothing more than an attempt to test our capabilities and response. It was an attempt to test the mechanisms of action within NATO and our ability to respond.”

Other European capitals and the European Union also labelled the raid a Russian test of the NATO alliance’s resolve in the face of Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, but Mr. Trump suggested otherwise.

“It could have been a mistake,” he told journalists late Thursday when asked about the incident. A day earlier, Mr. Trump issued a brief reaction to the incident, saying on his Truth Social platform: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!”

The White House did not offer any clarification of Mr. Trump’s remarks.

Previously, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said in a social media post that the U.S. stood “by our NATO Allies in the face of these airspace violations and will defend every inch of NATO territory.”

Poland’s Deputy Minister of Defense Cezary Tomczyk also rejected Mr. Trump’s suggestion on Thursday that the drone incursion could have been inadvertent.

“I think this is a message that should reach President Trump today: there’s no question of a mistake – this was a deliberate Russian attack,” he told the Polsat News television network.

“On the night that 19 Russian drones crossed into Poland, 400 (drones) plus 40 missiles crossed into Ukraine,” added Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski in a video message shared on social media, ahead of a visit to Ukraine’s capital. “These were not mistakes.”

Poland has requested a meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the Russian drone incursion, which is set to take place Friday afternoon.