Poland deploys F-16 jets to protect airspace amid Russia’s strikes on Ukraine

Poland says it has mobilised F-16 fighter jets and a Nato air tanker to protect Polish airspace amid Russia’s barrage of missile attacks on Ukraine.

“In order to ensure the security of Polish airspace, two pairs of F-16 fighters and an allied air tanker were activated,” Poland’s military command posted on X, formerly Twitter, on January 2, inews reports.

It comes after Poland detected what appeared to be a Russian missile enter the country’s airspace on Friday for almost three minutes before it turned back into Ukraine.

“Everything indicates that a Russian missile entered Polish airspace… It also left our airspace,” General Wieslaw Kukula, chief of the general staff of the Polish armed forces, said at the time.

The following day, Andrei Ordash, Russia’s chargé d’affaires in Poland, said Moscow would not comment on the incident until Warsaw gave evidence of an airspace violation.

“We will not give any explanations until we are presented with concrete evidence because these accusations are unsubstantiated,” he said, according to the Russian RIA Novosti news agency.

The Polish military command said measures were taken on January 2 due to “intensive long-range aviation activity of the Russian Federation” as part of its bombing campaign in Ukraine.