Gen. Maciej Klisz, operational commander of the Polish Armed Forces, told daily Rzeczpospolita the incident was linked to the overnight attack between Sept. 9 and 10 and challenged public claims that many of the objects were merely “cardboard” drones.
Klisz said it was difficult to give an exact number of unmanned aerial vehicles heading for Poland because “de facto every object in Ukrainian airspace that is on a western course is treated by the Operational Command as flying toward Poland.”
“According to our data, there were several hundred such objects,” he said.
“Not all were flying directly toward us; I assess that there were at least several dozen that did. They passed Kyiv and reached western Ukraine. Some of them struck infrastructure on Ukrainian territory.”
He said Polish data showed 23 objects crossed into Poland’s airspace. Some were found in fragments, which meant they were sometimes counted twice in media reports, while others were destroyed in Polish airspace, he added.
Klisz also said information from Ukraine indicated that Russia had been equipping even so-called decoy drones, used to saturate air defenses, with explosive materials.
“Therefore the narrative that these were cardboard and paperboard objects is not entirely true,” he said.
(jh)
Source: PAP