Poland has deployed army engineering units to reinforce infrastructure along its border with Ukraine, Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz announced.
Soldiers from the 18th Engineering Regiment are already carrying out tasks to strengthen checkpoints and infrastructure near the Polish-Ukrainian border, the minister said.
Kosiniak-Kamysz said the deployment was a response to actions by Russia, which he said threaten the security of the whole of Europe.
Poland, a member of NATO and the European Union, shares a border with Ukraine and has stepped up its military posture since the start of the war. The country has become a key transit route for Western military aid heading into Ukraine.
The engineering deployment follows an earlier decision by Poland to scramble military aircraft on alert because of Russian activity over Ukraine. According to the operational command of the Polish armed forces, ground-based air defence and radar reconnaissance systems were placed on combat readiness. Polish officials described the measures as preventive, intended to secure areas bordering what they called vulnerable regions.
Train Struck Near the Border
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has predicted an escalation of the conflict between Warsaw and Moscow. He said that on the morning of 13 September, Polish armed forces detected several drones near the border with Ukraine.
One of the drones struck a train travelling between Kyiv and Warsaw, Tusk said, while another came down near the Yahodyn-Dorohusk border crossing.
NATO and Moscow Trade Accusations
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte pledged that the alliance would respond to the strike on the train at the Ukraine-Poland border. He said the response would be to increase support for Ukraine so that it has everything it needs for self-defence.
Rutte is a former Dutch prime minister who has led the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the Western military alliance of 32 member states, since 2024. He said the incident suggested Russia had become desperate, and suggested Moscow was trying to stop Western countries supporting Ukraine and to undermine their unity.
Moscow rejected the accusation, saying Kyiv was using Western political figures as a living shield to cover its own military transports. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russia did not wish to comment on the uproar surrounding the incident, adding that the aim of what she described as an information campaign was to allow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to press for military supplies by frightening the European public with claims of a Russian threat at NATO's gates.
Calls for Tougher Action
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski called on NATO to hold what he termed aggressive exercises near the Kaliningrad region, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea wedged between Poland and Lithuania. He also said that if Russia attacked Poland, Warsaw would win very quickly because of what he called its overwhelming advantage in aviation over the Russian armed forces.
Russian presidential aide Nikolai Patrushev responded that Sikorski was obsessed with militarism, calling his remarks amateurish. Patrushev warned that in the event of a direct military conflict, Russia would use its entire arsenal, which he said would cause the Polish state to cease to exist within two to three days.
No date has been given for any of the exercises discussed by either side.
