Poland triggers NATO's Article 4 after downing Russian drones in its airspace

For the first time since the start of the war in Ukraine - Russian drones have been shot down in NATO airspace over Poland. According to Polish authorities they have downed seven Russian drones, with debris falling on several homes and buildings. No injuries have been reported.

Poland has activated NATO's Article 4, which opens the way for consultation with allies and a joint response. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk: "This is most likely a large-scale provocation. We are in consultations with our allies and I am in constant contact with the NATO Secretary General. We want to be ready to respond to this type of threat in the future as effectively as we did last night."

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said that his primary message to Russian President Vladimir Putin was to stop the war in Ukraine, and added: "A full assessment is ongoing. But of course, whether it was intentional or not, it is absolutely reckless. It is absolutely dangerous. But as I said the full assessment is ongoing."

For its part Moscow has said that it had no plans to target Poland, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Peskov: "This is within the purview of the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation, and as such we will not comment on this case in any way."

Concerns about the 50 strong contingent of Croatian soldiers in Poland were immediately quelled by the Croatian Defense Ministry, which reported that they were safe and had not participated in the downing of the drones. Meanwhile, the Foreign and European Affairs Ministry expressed solidarity with Poland, noting that the war in Ukraine has far reaching consequences. For his part President Zoran Milanović called for caution in formulating a response to the downing of the Russian drones: "Poland is our ally, so we have to find out what happened there. Because the amount of weapons and tensions that have engulfed that area in the past three years had to culminate in something like this. But we truly don't know exactly what happened. It doesn't appear that there were any concrete targets, because the border area is part of the battlefield, and all part of an effort in which NATO is helping Ukraine, which isn't in NATO, and is fighting against Russia, which made an incursion into Ukraine and engaged in an aggression. These are things that must be clearly established, what exactly is going on there. This is a dark time and an incredibly dangerous time."

Source: HRT