JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
More than a dozen Russian drones entered the airspace of Poland last night, triggering NATO to scramble fighter jets to shoot them down. It was a dangerous escalation of the war in neighboring Ukraine, and it was the first time in the history of NATO that alliance fighters engaged enemy aircraft in allied airspace. NPR's Rob Schmitz has been covering this, and he joins us from Berlin. Hi.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: Hey, Juana.
SUMMERS: Rob, what do we know about these drones and why they were flying in the airspace of a NATO member?
SCHMITZ: Yeah, we know this happened the same night as a large-scale drone and missile attack that Russia launched on Ukraine. Ukraine's air force says more than 400 Russian drones were involved in last night's attack, including areas in western Ukraine that border Poland. We're still not certain about the exact number of Russian drones that flew into Polish airspace, but Poland's government believes it was more than a dozen and as many as 19. And once these drones crossed into Poland, NATO scrambled fighter jets. That included Polish F-16s, Dutch F-35s, German Patriot air defense systems and even an Italian surveillance aircraft. And a number of these drones were then shot down.
SUMMERS: Were these drones armed? Were they targeting NATO territory?
SCHMITZ: Well, according to German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, these drones were deliberately set on this course into Poland and that they were armed with ammunition, but he did not elaborate on what exactly their payloads were.
SUMMERS: Now, Poland's government invoked Article 4 of the NATO treaty, and that's a rarely used mechanism. It's triggered when a member state is under threat, and it enables an emergency meeting with other NATO states. So tell us, how's NATO responding?
SCHMITZ: Well, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte spoke this afternoon to reporters, and he said NATO has launched an investigation to gather more details about this incursion. But he used today's incident to underline the need for Europe to start arming itself. Here's what he said.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MARK RUTTE: This only reinforces the importance of NATO and the path to which allies agreed at our summit in The Hague earlier this year. We need to invest more in our defense, ramp up defense production, so we have what we need to deter and defend. And we need to continue to support Ukraine, whose security is interlinked with our own.
SCHMITZ: And, Juana, he also had a message for Russian President Vladimir Putin. He said that Putin must stop this war in Ukraine, he must stop targeting innocent civilians and that he must stop violating allied airspace.
SUMMERS: How has Russia responded so far?
SCHMITZ: Yeah, it's been a bit of a mixed response. Earlier today, an official from Russia's ally and Poland's neighbor, Belarus, seemed to frame last night's incident as an accident that was caused when the drones veered off course after encountering what they called electronic interference. In other words, it was an accident.
But later on, Russia's defense ministry then said it had not planned to hit any targets in Poland and suggested that Poland was out of range of Russian drones, which is not true. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also weighed in. He accused the leadership of the EU and NATO of making accusations against Russia on what he called a daily basis without providing evidence. But Peskov stopped short of denying Russian involvement.
SUMMERS: Rob, what comes next?
SCHMITZ: Yeah, so NATO members have already met today, and the alliance will investigate this situation further. You know, it's worth pointing out here that this incursion happened a day after Poland said that it had closed its border with Belarus due to what it called aggressive military exercises, as well as a growing number of provocations from both Russia and Belarus. So the situation along that border has been pretty tense for quite some time already.
SUMMERS: NPR's Rob Schmitz in Berlin. Thank you, Rob.
SCHMITZ: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
