Polish military delegation to visit Ukraine to study air defense experience
Ukraine expects a delegation of Polish military officials to arrive this week to study the country’s experience in countering Russian air attacks, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi said at a briefing on Sept. 17.
"The minister announced last week during the visit of his Polish counterpart Radosław Sikorski that a Polish delegation would come to study our experience," Tykhyi said. "As of now, there is a date for the visit and details, but since we do not announce such visits for security reasons, I cannot go into specifics."
He noted that the Polish delegation would be "high-level." Further details will be provided by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry.
European countries remain poorly prepared for large-scale drone warfare and are turning to Ukraine, which has extensive battlefield experience, for guidance. Western militaries have few affordable tools to counter drones, having instead invested in costly precision systems designed for limited use against high-value targets such as cruise and ballistic missiles.
The upcoming visit comes after Poland's Air Force was forced to shoot down three or four Russian drones for the first time since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
At least 21 drones entered the Polish airspace on Sept. 10 in what Warsaw denounced as a deliberate provocation. European officials largely described as a Russian attempt to test NATO's resolve. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte later praised the performance of air defenses, describing it as the "successful… defense of NATO territory."
A Polish military official told Reuters that some of the drones were identified as Gerbera models — low-cost Russian copies of Shahed drones, built from plywood and foam, typically fitted with small warheads and mass-produced at a factory in Russia’s Tatarstan region alongside other types of kamikaze drones.
