WYRYKI-WOLA, Poland — Poland gathered its NATO allies for urgent talks Wednesday after Russian drones flew into Polish airspace during an attack on Ukraine, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said, warning that the situation was inching closer to "open conflict".

 

Poland's airspace was violated 19 times, Tusk said, and at least three drones were shot down after Warsaw and its allies scrambled jets. Authorities said nobody was harmed.

 

Footage posted by local media showed firefighters and the army in Wyryki-Wola, a village in eastern Poland, inspecting a house with its roof ripped open and debris littered nearby.

 

Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said the intrusion was not accidental, calling it "an unprecedented case of an attack not only on Poland's territory but also on the territory of NATO and the European Union".

 

US President Donald Trump called out Russia Wednesday for "violating" NATO ally Poland's airspace with drones, after the White House said he was tracking reports on the intrusion.

 

"What's with Russia violating Poland's airspace with drones? Here we go!" Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. Trump did not elaborate on what he meant by the last part of the brief message.

 

Trump warned at the weekend that he was ready to impose more sanctions on Moscow over its war on Ukraine, amid growing frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

 

But Trump's curt statement on Wednesday also represented the latest occasion on which he has avoided direct criticism of Putin, whom he hosted for a summit in Alaska in August.

 

The White House announced that Trump would soon speak with his Polish counterpart Karol Nawrocki, a close nationalist ally who visited the Oval Office last week.

 

"President Trump and the White House are tracking the reports out of Poland, and there are plans for President Trump to speak with President Nawrocki today," a White House official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

 

Russia's defence ministry denied targeting Poland and its foreign ministry accused Warsaw of spreading "myths" to escalate the war in Ukraine.

 

The Russian embassy in Warsaw separately told AFP that "Poland has failed to provide evidence of the Russian origin of the objects that entered Polish airspace".

 

Russian drones and missiles have entered the airspace of NATO members including Poland several times during Russia's three-and-a-half-year war, but a NATO country has never attempted to shoot them down.

 

Tusk said he had invoked NATO's Article 4, under which a member can call urgent talks when it feels its "territorial integrity, political independence or security" are at risk -- only the eighth time the measure has been used.

 

"This situation... brings us closer than ever to open conflict since World War II," Tusk told parliament, though there is "no reason today to claim that we are in a state of war".

 

The incident came as Russia unleashed a barrage of strikes across Ukraine, including in the western city of Lviv.

 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the airspace violation was a "dangerous precedent" for Europe and urged a strong response from Kyiv's Western allies.

 

Poland's interior ministry said a house and a car had been damaged overnight, adding that seven drones and debris from an unknown projectile had been located so far.

 

"We were just sitting there, and this plane flew over... I said to my husband: 'Why is this plane so loud today?' And suddenly, a bang, and that was it," Alicja Wesolowska, 64, whose house was destroyed, told AFP in Wyryki-Wola.

 

The North Atlantic Council, NATO's main political decision-making body, changed the format of its weekly meeting on Wednesday to hold it under Article 4 of the treaty.

 

A cornerstone of NATO is the principle that an attack on any member is deemed an attack on all.

 

NATO chief Mark Rutte hailed his organisation's "very successful reaction", telling journalists the alliance's air defences had done their job.

 

He denounced Moscow's "reckless behaviour" and called on Putin to halt a war that he said was now being waged on civilians.

 

'Act of aggression'

 

Russia's top diplomat in Poland, Andrei Ordash, told RIA Novosti earlier Wednesday that he had been summoned to the foreign ministry for a meeting.

 

The operational command of Poland's military said the airspace violations were "unprecedented" and "an act of aggression".

 

As European capitals rushed out condemnations, several portrayed the incident as Russia testing Ukraine's allies.

 

"What he wants to do is to test us," said the EU's top diplomat Kaja Kallas. "And every time he's bolder, because he's able to be bolder because our response hasn't been strong enough."

 

A senior NATO diplomat, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the response from NATO would probably be "shifting a few extra assets" to Poland or elsewhere in the east, and pushing a "tough line" from the NATO secretary general.

 

The intrusion came just days before the Zapad-2025 military drills in Russia and Belarus on September 12-16.

 

Tusk, commenting on the drills, said "critical days" were ahead for Poland, after earlier announcing the closures of its few remaining border crossings with Belarus over the drills.

 

Poland, a major supporter of Ukraine, hosts over a million Ukrainian refugees and is a key transit point for Western humanitarian and military aid to the war-torn country.