Poland is stepping up civil defence preparations along its eastern border by installing more than 1,000 automated warning sirens, as Russian strikes increasingly hit targets near the Polish-Ukrainian border.
As Polish Radio reports, Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński announced the expansion on Saturday during a briefing in Lublin.
Kierwiński said Russia has changed its tactics, and border crossings and other infrastructure near the frontier are increasingly being targeted by strike drones and missiles.
According to the minister, at the start of 2024 the region had only around 30 operational sirens that could be activated remotely, whereas today there are nearly 350.
The modernisation follows a series of Russian attacks that have highlighted the vulnerability of infrastructure near the Polish border.
On Thursday, the airports in Lublin and Rzeszów temporarily suspended operations, and Polish and NATO fighter jets were scrambled to protect regional airspace during what Polish officials described as a large-scale Russian air attack on western Ukraine.
Later, Prime Minister Donald Tusk confirmed that a powerful explosion occurred just a few hundred metres from the Polish border crossing in Dorohusk after a Russian strike hit a Ukrainian petrol station.
Another incident occurred on 13 September, when a Russian drone struck a passenger train locomotive at a railway station in western Ukraine, about two kilometres from the Polish border. The attack disrupted regional logistics and came shortly after a diplomatic train carrying representatives of various countries had departed the station.
- Poland plans to equip more than 100 km of its land border with Ukraine with electronic protection systems. They will complement physical barriers and will include monitoring systems and motion detectors.
- One of the planned projects will cover 69 km in the area of responsibility of the Nadbużany Border Guard unit. Another 43 km of the border will be equipped in the area of responsibility of the Bieszczady unit.
- In addition to the Ukrainian direction, Poland intends to expand protection systems on its borders with Russia and Belarus. In particular, observation towers with optoelectronic systems will be installed there, and equipment to detect drones will be deployed on the border with Belarus.