Poland tracked a Russian Mi-8 near Braniewo for 42 seconds
Poland's operational command said an Mi-8 from Kaliningrad entered about 300 metres and stayed 42 seconds on 23 September. Fighter jets scrambled, radar tracked the flight, and ground units stayed on standby. Moscow offered no comment. Euronews reports the same Wednesday violation in the Warmian-Masurian region.
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A short entry from Kaliningrad
Poland's operational command said an Mi-8 from Kaliningrad entered about 300 metres and stayed 42 seconds. The command's notice, which the BBC reports, places that track near Braniewo. Radar tracked the flight, and ground units stayed on standby. Euronews reports the same Wednesday violation as a Russian military helicopter crossing into Polish airspace in the Warmian-Masurian region, with radar tracking the flight. The measured entry is shallow and brief: about 300 metres, and 42 seconds. Those two figures are the command's notice. They are not an estimate added later. A reader can hold the depth and the duration apart from any claim about why the helicopter was there.[1], [2]
Jets scrambled, and Moscow was silent
Fighter jets scrambled. Euronews reports that scramble as part of the same airspace violation. The BBC adds that Moscow offered no comment. The operational command said radar tracked the flight and that ground units stayed on standby, so the response on the Polish side was not only the aircraft that left the ground. It was also the units held ready. Silence from Moscow is the other half of the day: the command published a track, and there is no Russian account of the same 42 seconds beside it. The absence of that comment does not fill in a motive. It leaves the command's notice as the public measurement.[1], [2]
The command's reading is not a confirmed intent
The operational command wrote that the incident showed Russia testing air defence again. The BBC records that sentence as Warsaw's reading. Russia's intent was not independently confirmed. Euronews confirms the violation, the region, the radar track and the scramble. It does not supply a separate Russian explanation, and the BBC's account has Moscow offering no comment. The event a reader can settle is therefore the track itself: an Mi-8 from Kaliningrad, about 300 metres inside, 42 seconds, jets scrambled, radar on the flight, ground units on standby, near Braniewo, on 23 September. The sentence that calls this a test of air defence is the command's interpretation. It is marked as that, because the intent was not independently confirmed.[1], [2]
