NEW YORK, April 26. /TASS/. In responding to incidents where Warsaw sees alleged violations of NATO’s airspace by Russian missiles, the North Atlantic Alliance should avoid provocations against Russia, Polish President Andrzej Duda told The Wall Street Journal in an interview.
"I believe that we should try to avoid a situation in which Russia could say that it was provoked by NATO," the Polish leader said. He refused to say how Warsaw and NATO would respond were a Russian missile to cause casualties in Poland. Duda slammed the reported instances of Russian missiles entering Poland's airspace as "a Russian provocation." He added that NATO partners were opposed to the idea of intercepting missiles beyond the bloc’s territory, over Ukrainian airspace, too.
Earlier, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Szejna said in a RMF24 radio broadcast that NATO is considering shooting down missiles flying very close to the alliance’s borders. On March 24, the Polish Armed Forces reported a violation of the country’s airspace on the border with Ukraine. They claimed that it was a Russian cruise missile. According to the Polish command, the missile, allegedly launched by Russian long-range aviation, flew into Polish airspace near the village of Ozerdow in the Lublin Province on the border with Ukraine and left after 39 seconds. No proof of these claims has been provided.
In late December of last year, the operational command reported that Polish air borders had been violated by an unknown object, leading Duda to convene an emergency meeting with the Defense Ministry leadership. The chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, General Wieslaw Kukula, claimed that a Russian missile appeared in the airspace of the country. Following an inspection of the area where the missile was seen entering the airspace from Ukraine, Polish servicemen did not find anything that posed a threat.