Poland, Romania Scramble Jets After Russian Strikes on Ukraine

Poland and Romania both scrambled fighter jets on Nov. 19 amid Russian airstrikes on Ukraine.

Warsaw said Polish and allied aircraft were deployed early in the morning to ensure the safety of the nation’s airspace.

“In connection with the attack by the Russian Federation carrying out strikes on facilities located on the territory of Ukraine, Polish and allied aviation is operating in our airspace,” Poland’s Operational Command of the Armed Forces said in a post on X.

“Duty fighter pairs and an early warning aircraft have been scrambled, and ground-based air defense systems as well as radio detection and ranging reconnaissance systems have reached a state of maximum readiness.”

Two airports, at Rzeszow and Lublin in the southeast of the country, were also closed as a result of the Kremlin’s aerial assault, the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency (PANSA) said.

“Due to the need to ensure freedom of operation for military aviation, Rzeszow and Lublin airports have been temporarily closed,” PANSA said on X.

Both were reopened a short while later, and the Operational Command said that they did not observe any infringements of Polish airspace.

In Romania, fighters also took to the skies when a drone breached its airspace, the Ministry of National Defense said.

The country, which shares a 400-mile border with Ukraine, has had drone fragments fall on its territory repeatedly because of Russian attacks on ports on the Ukrainian side of the Danube River.

Radar initially picked up the signal of a drone about five miles inside Romanian airspace near the villages of Periprava and Chilia Veche in Tulcea County.

The signal then vanished before reappearing intermittently for 12 minutes near villages in Galati County, it added.

A duo of Eurofighters—part of a German air policing mission in Romania—were scrambled, followed shortly after by a brace of Romanian F-16s.

Warnings were issued to citizens in the southeastern counties of Tulcea and Galati to take cover, the ministry said. It stated that it received no reports of drones hitting Romanian ground.

Both Poland and Romania are members of NATO and the European Union.

The news comes the same day Poland announced the closure of Russia’s consulate in Gdansk, the Kremlin’s last on Polish territory, in response to a railway explosion it blames on Moscow.

Moscow, in turn, has accused Warsaw of “Russophobia” and has announced intentions to scale back Poland’s diplomatic mission to Russia, according to Russian state news agency Tass.

Russia has frequently been blamed for incursions into European airspace in recent months. Moscow has denied NATO’s accusations of repeated violations.

NATO launched a major air operation, dubbed “Eastern Sentry,” in September with the stated aim of defending its eastern flank.

As part of the operation, Danish, French, German, and British jets are now flying sorties across the region.

Last month, Alexus Grynkewich, a U.S. Air Force general serving as NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe, said that Moscow appeared to have been deterred by the response.

“We do see indications that the Russians are trying to be more careful, that they recognize that they came close to or crossed a line in a couple of cases, particularly when you consider the drone event in Poland,” he said.

“We’ll have a deterrent effect, but they’re going to continue to try to move and take hybrid approaches to how they challenge the alliance.”

However, despite these moves by NATO, air traffic was suspended at Brussels and Liege airports in Belgium on Nov. 4 because of drone sightings, days after the government stated that it had received reports that unmanned aerial vehicles were flying near a Belgian military base that houses U.S. nuclear weapons.