Most UN Security Council members denounce Russia's drone incursion into Poland

HAMILTON, Canada

A majority of UN Security Council members strongly criticized Russia's drone incursion into Polish airspace earlier this week, and expressed solidarity with Poland and Ukraine on Friday.

"Slovenia strongly condemns this incursion into Polish airspace," said Slovenia's UN envoy, Samuel Zbogar, as he "strongly" condemned the incursion. "Europe is deeply alarmed."

"Let us be clear, such mistakes do not happen," he said, calling the incursions "aggressive and dangerous acts."

Denmark's UN envoy, Christina Markus Lassen, said: "This is a dangerous and reckless escalation that is completely unacceptable."

She argued that "what we have witnessed over the skies, over Poland is a reminder that Russia's drone surge is not by any means restricted to the war of aggression in Ukraine."

French envoy to the UN, Jerome Bonnafont, said France "condemns the unacceptable incursion of Russian drones into Poland's territory," and expressed "full solidarity with Poland."

"Rather than choosing de-escalation in the war that it decided to launch in 2022, Russia is instead, once again, showing the threat that it poses for the stability of Europe and for global stability," he argued.

The UK's UN envoy Barbara Woodward also expressed similar sentiments.

"We will continue to work with our NATO allies to defend every inch of allied territory," she said, rejecting "Russia's denials and attempts to diminish the seriousness of this incident."

The US’ envoy, Dorothy Shea, pledged to "defend every inch of NATO territory."

"This incident does not help the extraordinary efforts that the United States has undertaken in recent weeks to broker an end to the war," she said, and accused Russia of intensifying attacks on Ukraine since a summit in the US state of Alaska in August between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

She argued that Russia's incursions, "with the addition of violating the airspace of a US ally intentionally or otherwise, show immense disrespect for good faith US efforts to bring an end to this conflict."

Without expressing solidarity with Ukraine, Shea urged Russia to take steps toward peace and end the war with Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russia's UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia denied targeting Poland intentionally.

"We think it is important to analyze the real magnitude of the consequences of the incident and to compare this with the political clickbait which is being advanced by Polish and other European politicians," he said.

Nebenzia called on Polish officials to "take advantage" of Russia's proposal for talks, rather than "engaging in megaphone diplomacy at multilateral platforms."

"We have already repeatedly stated that we are not interested in escalating tensions with Warsaw," he said, and emphasized that Moscow is "open to constructive cooperation with everybody who genuinely is focused on de-escalation and the establishment of peace in Europe, not pursuing the conflict for the sake of parochial political advantages."