Poland will seek explanations from Ukraine after an explosive-carrying Ukrainian drone entered Lithuanian airspace and crashed near the Latvian border, Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced on Tuesday.
Tusk said Poland would work closely with Lithuania to establish the circumstances of Sunday’s incident and expected full cooperation from the Ukrainian authorities.
He also emphasised that no foreign country is permitted to conduct military operations on or over Polish territory without Warsaw’s explicit consent.
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The announcement follows Lithuanian findings suggesting that the drone travelled through Polish airspace before entering Lithuania on 18 October, despite Polish military radar systems initially reporting no corresponding border crossing.
In a further development on Tuesday, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda confirmed that the Polish and Lithuanian defence ministries had established a joint group to investigate the incident.
According to Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT, Nausėda said the authorities possessed additional information but would not make conclusions public before the investigation was completed.
Poland has not yet published a final military finding confirming that the Ukrainian drone crossed its territory.
Tusk says Poland will press Ukraine for explanations
Speaking before Tuesday’s Council of Ministers meeting in Warsaw, Tusk said he wanted to establish exactly how the drone reached Lithuania.
The prime minister confirmed that he would discuss the incident with President Nausėda during his visit to Poland.
In the official account published by the Prime Minister’s Office, Tusk expressed confidence that Poland and Lithuania would cooperate closely.
He said the investigation would require detailed exchanges between military authorities and expected Ukraine to contribute information about the aircraft’s original mission and loss of contact.
According to Polish Press Agency reporting carried by Defence24, Tusk said Poland’s Armed Forces Operational Commander would request explanations from the Ukrainian side.
The prime minister indicated that the government would pursue the matter persistently, but without assuming hostile intentions.
His comments mark a significant expansion of the Polish response.
Until now, the investigation had focused principally on conflicting Polish and Lithuanian radar accounts and technical analysis of the drone’s movements.
Tuesday’s announcement brings Ukraine directly into Poland’s official effort to establish what happened.
However, the announcement establishes the government’s intention to seek explanations. A formal request’s transmission to Kyiv or the Ukrainian military had not been independently confirmed in the latest information reviewed.
Poland insists foreign military operations require consent
Tusk also made a broader statement about Poland’s authority over its territory and airspace.
He emphasised that Poland does not permit foreign military operations on or over the country without explicit authorisation.
The prime minister said that position would remain unchanged regardless of which country might seek to conduct such operations.
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His warning came in the context of reports that the drone had been carrying explosives and may have crossed Polish territory while travelling towards Lithuania.
The statement underscores the distinction between Poland’s support for Ukraine’s defence against Russia and Warsaw’s separate responsibility to protect Polish airspace.
Poland has provided extensive military and logistical assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Nevertheless, such cooperation does not automatically authorise Ukrainian military aircraft to transit Polish territory while conducting operations against targets elsewhere.
At the same time, Tusk’s remarks should not be interpreted as a finding that Ukraine deliberately carried out an unauthorised military operation over Poland.
Whether the drone crossed Polish airspace, and why it deviated from its intended route, remain matters for investigators to establish.
Lithuanian president confirms joint investigative group
Tuesday also brought new confirmation of direct cooperation between the two NATO neighbours.
Speaking to Lithuanian broadcaster LRT while visiting Poland, Nausėda said the Polish and Lithuanian defence ministries had formed a group to investigate the drone incident.
He acknowledged that additional information was available but said it would be premature to disclose conclusions before the joint assessment had been completed.
The Lithuanian president also stressed the importance of sharing military and intelligence information between the two countries.
He argued that effective information-sharing could help protect lives during future incidents involving unidentified aircraft.
His comments came after Lithuanian officials criticised the absence of advance information from Poland during Sunday’s airspace alert.
Nausėda acknowledged that detecting small or difficult-to-track aircraft was a complex technical challenge and that surveillance systems could be improved.
The establishment of a joint investigative group represents a concrete development beyond the earlier announcements that the two countries intended to cooperate.
However, neither government has published the group’s findings or a final reconstruction of Sunday’s flight path.
Lithuania says drone was detected inside Poland
Lithuanian authorities presented a detailed chronology of the aircraft’s movements on Monday, following a meeting of the country’s National Security Commission.
Lithuanian Defence Staff chief Rear Admiral Giedrius Premeneckas said surveillance systems first recorded the object approximately 30–40 kilometres inside Polish territory.
According to the Lithuanian military account reported by BNS, the initial radar observation took place at approximately 5:47am Lithuanian time on Sunday.
Officials reported that the object subsequently crossed into Lithuania at approximately 6:02am.
Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius said the available evidence indicated that the aircraft was Ukrainian and had been carrying explosives.
He also said information from Kyiv suggested Ukraine had lost contact with one of its drones during operations directed against targets in Russia.
Lithuanian investigators considered it likely that the missing aircraft was the one recovered near Juodžionys in northern Lithuania.
The drone’s wreckage damaged a civilian vehicle, but no injuries were reported.
The military’s chronology raises serious questions about the object travelling through Polish territory.
However, the underlying radar recordings have not been publicly released for independent examination.
A suspected approach from Poland also does not establish where the aircraft was originally launched.
Polish Defence Ministry denies alternative launch claim
Polish authorities have maintained that their military radar systems did not confirm the border crossing described by Lithuanian officials.
The disagreement became more complicated on Monday when Polish media, citing unnamed defence sources, suggested that the drone might have been launched from inside Lithuania.
Poland’s Ministry of National Defence subsequently issued an official statement rejecting that account.
The ministry said the media reports did not reflect its position and urged against repeating unsupported speculation.
It confirmed that the drone was Ukrainian and had exploded inside Lithuania.
Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz had already instructed Poland’s Armed Forces Operational Commander to conduct a detailed analysis of the events surrounding the incident.
The inquiry includes radar information from the Polish-Lithuanian and Polish-Ukrainian border regions, together with relevant data from neighbouring countries.
Poland confirmed that this work was being carried out in cooperation with Lithuania.
The distinction between the competing accounts remains important.
Poland’s rejection of the Lithuania-based launch theory does not, by itself, establish that the drone crossed Polish airspace.
Equally, the absence of a corresponding Polish radar track does not conclusively disprove the Lithuanian observation.
Resolving the discrepancy requires the joint examination now under way.
NATO fighters scrambled during Sunday’s incident
The original incident prompted a significant security response in Lithuania.
On the morning of 18 October, authorities detected an unidentified object moving through Lithuanian airspace and issued emergency warnings to residents.
The alert affected parts of northern and central Lithuania, while Kaunas Airport temporarily suspended operations.
NATO scrambled two Italian Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft operating under alliance command.
According to Reuters’ account of the response, the fighter aircraft were unable to visually identify the object because of cloud cover.
The aircraft did not shoot it down.
The suspected drone subsequently exploded near the village of Juodžionys, in Lithuania’s Pasvalys district, close to Latvia.
Debris damaged a vehicle, and investigators recovered fragments for examination.
The incident also prompted a temporary air warning in Latvia.
The deployment of NATO aircraft demonstrates the seriousness with which the alliance treats unidentified aircraft entering member states’ airspace.
Nevertheless, the response does not establish that the incident was a deliberate attack on NATO territory.
Ukraine suggests Russian electronic interference
Ukraine has expressed regret over the incident and offered to cooperate with Lithuanian investigators.
In a statement reported by Reuters on Sunday, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi suggested that Russian electronic-warfare systems might have interfered with the drone’s navigation.
Such interference can disrupt satellite positioning systems and communications used by unmanned aircraft.
An affected drone might lose contact with its operator or deviate from a planned route.
Ukrainian officials linked the suspected diversion to operations directed against military targets in Russia.
However, Russian electronic interference remains a proposed explanation rather than an independently verified cause.
No published technical investigation has established exactly what diverted the aircraft or whether a mechanical, navigational or operational failure was involved.
Ukraine’s apology and offer to share information are relevant, but they do not answer the outstanding questions about the object’s movements.
Those questions are now central to the explanations Poland intends to request.
Why the incident matters for NATO airspace security
The case highlights the difficulty of maintaining reliable airspace surveillance across NATO’s eastern flank during Russia’s continuing war against Ukraine.
Poland and Lithuania share a land border and cooperate closely on defence, but their initial assessments of the drone’s movements differed significantly.
Lithuanian military officials say their systems detected the aircraft while it was still inside Poland.
Polish military authorities have not reported a matching observation.
The difference raises practical questions about surveillance coverage, radar sensitivity and the exchange of information between neighbouring countries.
Small unmanned aircraft can be challenging to detect, particularly when their size, altitude and flight characteristics complicate radar tracking.
Lithuania has been working to expand its detection capabilities and improve the integration of military surveillance systems.
Following Sunday’s incident, Lithuanian officials also raised questions about the speed of civilian warning procedures and the effectiveness of access to emergency shelters.
The country’s defence authorities have been examining whether changes to identification and interception procedures are necessary.
Lithuania has also begun discussions with NATO concerning the circumstances in which unidentified aircraft might be engaged without visual confirmation.
Those discussions remain separate from the investigation into Sunday’s drone.
For Poland, the immediate challenge is establishing whether existing systems recorded any part of the aircraft’s flight and how the available data compares with Lithuania’s account.
What happens next?
The next stage will involve the joint Polish-Lithuanian investigation and Poland’s announced request for explanations from Ukraine.
Investigators will need to establish the drone’s original mission, its route, the cause of its deviation and the circumstances of its explosion.
They must also determine whether Polish airspace was crossed and whether surveillance or information-sharing procedures require changes.
The Ukrainian authorities may be able to provide technical information about the drone and its last known position, although the scope of any response has not yet been confirmed.
The joint group formed by the Polish and Lithuanian defence ministries has not announced a timetable for publishing its findings.
Tuesday’s developments therefore mark an important step towards a more comprehensive investigation, rather than a final determination of responsibility.
Tusk has made clear that Poland expects answers and that foreign military operations in Polish territory require its consent.
Nausėda, meanwhile, has confirmed that the two countries are working together to establish what happened.
Until the joint findings are released, Lithuania’s reported radar track and Poland’s lack of corresponding confirmation remain unresolved.
