Russian drone incursion over Poland ‘deliberate’ test — and warning to NATO: expert

Russia’s incursion into Poland’s airspace was a deliberate test of NATO’s defense systems and a warning to the West to end its aid for Ukraine, an expert on the conflict said.

While Moscow claims that it did not intentionally deploy drones into Poland on Wednesday, the sheer scope of the incident indicates that it was a coordinated Russian operation, said Christina Harward, an analyst for the Institute for the Study of War think tank.

“Given the number of drones that violated Polish airspace overnight, this was likely a deliberate Russian incursion,” she told The Post.

“We have seen limited drone and missile incursions into Poland and other states that neighbor Ukraine throughout the war, but nothing of this scale,” she added.

At least 19 projectiles were detected flying into Poland on Tuesday night and into Wednesday, prompting the country and its NATO allies to scramble their jets and shoot down some of the drones, officials said.

While most of the projectiles were shot down or crashed near the border with Ukraine, at least two unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, were located more than 100 miles into Poland.

The incident gave Moscow an insight into not only how Warsaw operates, but how NATO might react in the face of an immediate attack on one of its member states, Harward said.

“Russia was trying to gauge their defensive capabilities, reaction times, command structures, and interoperability,” she added.

European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius surmised the same thing, slamming the incident as a deliberate act meant to test the West.

Harward warned that, along with testing the West’s defenses, the incursion will also be exploited by Russia in the coming days to threaten Europe as a whole, given the EU’s stance on aiding Ukraine.

“This deliberate Russian incursion likely aimed in part to deter the West from supplying Ukraine with military aid,” Harward said.

“Russia is trying to invoke panic in the Polish population. Russia wants the Polish people to push Warsaw to stop its support for Ukraine out of fear that such support makes all of Poland a target.”

Following reports of just how deep the Russian drones managed to get inside of Poland, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Western allied nations to beef up their defenses and be prepared for any future aggression from Moscow.

Zelensky added that his nation — which has fended off thousands of Russian drones throughout more than three years of war — is “open and ready” to provide support for its allies.

With Post wires