FILE PHOTO: General Wieslaw Kukula, chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces, speaks during a news conference following National Security Council meeting in Warsaw after an unidentified aerial object entered Polish airspace, Poland, December 29, 2023. Dawid Zuchowicz / Agencja Wyborcza.pl via REUTERS/File Photo
WARSAW (Reuters) -Two incursions of Polish airspace by drones occurred overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, but they were not shot down as they posed no danger, the army said on Thursday.
Poland has been on high alert for objects entering its airspace since a stray Ukrainian missile struck a southern Polish village in 2022, killing two people, a few months into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
"We had two airspace violations," General Maciej Klisz, Operational Commander of the Armed Forces, told a news conference. "These two violations were under the full control of national forces and units assigned to the state defence system."
General Wieslaw Kukula, Chief of the General Staff, said that drones left Polish airspace without causing any damage.
The Polish army gave no details about where the drones entered Polish airspace.
Russia fired more than 500 drones and dozens of missiles across Ukraine in the night between Tuesday and Wednesday, hitting energy and transport infrastructure at 14 sites and injuring four railway workers.
Poland, a NATO member state, has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine against Russia.
In August, a drone crashed into a cornfield in eastern Poland. A prosecutor investigating the incident said at the time it appeared to have entered Poland from the direction of Belarus, an ally of Russia.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz, Barbara Erling; editing by Mark Heinrich)
