KYIV (Reuters) -Ukrainian troops and engineers will train their Polish counterparts in a joint group on countering drones, Ukraine’s defence minister Denys Shmyhal said on Thursday, a week after Russian drones flew into Poland.
“We are talking about training engineers and training soldiers who will withstand and defend the air domain,” Shmyhal told reporters at a press conference alongside his Polish counterpart in Kyiv.
“We are not only talking about interceptor drones, because this is only the tip of this iceberg which allows us to defend our sky together,” he said.
More than 20 Russian drones entered Polish airspace on the night of September 9-10, prompting NATO jets to down some of them and creating a growing sense of alarm in Warsaw about Moscow’s willingness to test the alliance’s resolve.
Fighter jets fired missiles to down those drones, a process that costs much more than Russia pays to supply and launch cheap, mass-produced drones.
Russia said its forces had been attacking Ukraine at the time of the drone incursions and that it had not intended to hit targets in Poland.
Ukraine says it has world-leading capabilities in counteracting massed Russian drone attacks cheaply, using a complex layered system involving interceptor drones, heavy machine guns and electronic warfare.
Shmyhal said Ukraine would provide access to some of its systems tracking Russian aerial targets so that Poland could see those potentially heading towards its territory.
Training for Polish forces would involve the entire “ecosystem” of how to intercept enemy unmanned aerial vehicles, from identifying their location and jamming them electronically to downing them with interceptor drones, he said.
Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said the Ukrainians and Poles would train together at a training ground in Lipa, southern Poland.
(Reporting by Max Hunder and Yuliia Dysa; Additional reporting Barbara Erling in Warsaw; Editing by Timothy Heritage, Aidan Lewis)
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