Poland does not rule out provocation in violation of airspace by Russian missile

The head of Poland's National Security Bureau, Jacek Severa, said on Wednesday that he could not rule out that the Dec. 29 violation of Polish airspace by a Russian missile, according to Warsaw, was a provocation, writes UNN citing Reuters.

"I can't rule it out. (Our) allies also don't rule it out," Severa told TVN24 when asked if he believed the violation was more of a provocation than an accident.

"It is difficult to assume that the violation of Poland's border 40 kilometers (inland) was accidental. Such a trajectory violates the airspace very significantly," he said.

Severa said the recent change of government in Warsaw and among Poland's top military officials could also have been a factor.

"The Kremlin administration realizes that at a very difficult moment in Poland, the government is being taken over by an administration that has not been in power for eight years," he pointed out. - For that reason, the risk of testing is high.

Severa also noted that recent global positioning system (GPS) failures in Poland and the Baltic region are a cause for concern.

"If we add incidents like the GPS system failure ... that seem, shall we say, non-specific, it's actually very worrying for military planners," he pointed out.

"It concerns jamming the allied signal near the Suwalk corridor, around the ports of Gdynia, through which allied (military) aid arrives, and the Danish straits, and it does not affect the (Russian) GLONASS system," which is Russia's equivalent of Western GPS, Severa said.

Supplement

In late December, the Polish military said an object it identified as a Russian guided missile violated the country's airspace on Dec. 29 from the Ukrainian border and left three minutes after entering.