A Russian-made military drone recovered from Poland’s Baltic coast was carrying an explosive warhead, prosecutors have confirmed, significantly increasing the seriousness of an incident initially treated as the discovery of a suspected Russian unmanned aircraft.
The drone, found near Rusinowo close to Jarosławiec on 14 September, has been preliminarily identified as a Gerbera 2, a type produced and used by Russia.
Col Bartosz Okoniewski, deputy district prosecutor for military affairs at the Regional Prosecutor’s Office in Poznań, said the aircraft contained a fragmentation-explosive warhead fitted with a detonator.
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The explosive charge weighed around 4 kilograms, he said.
Specialists separated the warhead from the drone and destroyed it in a controlled explosion on the beach on Tuesday evening. The aircraft itself was preserved for further forensic examination.
The discovery means the drone was not simply a reconnaissance platform or unarmed decoy, as remained possible when Polish authorities first recovered it.
Prosecutors are now investigating how the aircraft reached Polish territory, where it was launched from and what its intended destination may have been.
According to Okoniewski, the drone was first observed drifting on the surface of the Baltic Sea near Jarosławiec and was monitored by a Polish Navy vessel before it washed ashore near Rusinowo at around 11 a.m.
The examination involved military prosecutors, the Military Counterintelligence Service, military and police bomb-disposal specialists, the Military Gendarmerie and the fire service.
Investigators have opened proceedings under a preliminary legal classification concerning the creation of an event threatening the life or health of many people, or property of significant value, through an explosion involving explosive materials.
They are also examining whether the aircraft crossed Poland’s state border without the required authorisation.
The prosecutor said investigators had not yet established whether the drone had been detected by Polish coastal radar systems.
Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz has suggested the aircraft may have followed a route linked to a separate Russian drone incident over Lithuania.
He said the drone recovered near Rusinowo could have passed over Lithuania on Sunday, where an attempt was made to neutralise it, before crossing toward Russia’s Kaliningrad region and later operating over the Baltic Sea.
That possible flight path has not yet been established as fact. Polish and Lithuanian services are expected to cooperate in reconstructing the aircraft’s movements.
Gerbera drones have been used by Russian forces during the war in Ukraine, including as relatively inexpensive unmanned aircraft capable of carrying explosive payloads or complicating air-defence operations.
When the Rusinowo drone was first recovered, Polish Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said preliminary inspection indicated it was a Russian military unmanned aerial vehicle.
At that stage, authorities had not publicly confirmed whether it was armed.
The latest forensic findings materially change the nature of the incident by establishing that the aircraft was carrying an explosive warhead when it reached the Polish coast.
The event comes amid heightened concern in Poland over Russian drone and missile activity close to NATO territory.
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Russian strikes in western Ukraine have recently hit infrastructure only a few kilometres from the Polish border, prompting Warsaw to raise military readiness and strengthen protection at several crossings with Ukraine.
Poland has also repeatedly scrambled fighter aircraft and placed air-defence systems on higher alert during large Russian missile and drone attacks on western Ukraine.
There is currently no evidence that the Rusinowo drone was deliberately directed at a target in Poland.
Investigators are continuing to examine the aircraft in an effort to determine its point of origin, intended route and destination.
