Poland reported today the detection of a possible “observation balloon” from Belarus, with which it lost contact in the last few hours, amid tensions between these two neighboring countries due to their opposing positions on the war in Ukraine and the influx of immigrants.
In a brief statement posted on its Twitter account, the Polish Ministry of Defense announced that “the Air Operations Center noticed the appearance in the airspace of an object that flew from the direction of Belarus.”
“According to information from the center, it is probably an observation balloon,” the message added, before indicating that “radar contact was lost near Rypin county,” in the north-central part of the country.
“In this sense, the Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces decided to use the regular forces of the Territorial Defense Forces to search for the object,” remarked the text reproduced by the Europa Press news agency.
In additional statements to the official Polish news agency PAP, the center’s spokesman, Commander Witold Sura, confirmed the incident and specified that the search team is a small group, but “if necessary, we will give the order to mobilize a largest contingent.
Poland is one of Ukraine’s strongest allies in the face of the Russian invasion, while Belarus expressed its support for the Kremlin and the country’s president, Alexandr Lukashenko, met on several occasions with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
At the end of April, Poland discovered a “military object” in a forest near Bydgoszcz, probably elements of a Russian X-55 missile, which may have been launched from a Russian plane from Belarusian territory on December 16 last year. when Russia was conducting a massive missile attack on Ukraine.
Meanwhile, in 2021, there was a crisis with hundreds of migrants, mostly war refugees from Syria and Iraq, including entire families with children, who camped on the Belarusian-Polish border.
Belarus was accused in the UN Security Council of “trying to destabilize” the region” with migrants, in a conflict that led to the construction of a huge fence at the border crossing.
Source: Ambito
