DISINFO: Drones in Poland could not be Russian as their reach is up to 700 km
SUMMARY
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk claimed that several drones had violated Polish airspace and called them "Russian," although the Polish side did not provide any evidence of the alleged Russian origin of the unmanned aircraft. However, the maximum flight range of the Russian unmanned aircraft used in the latest Russian armed forces attack on military targets in Ukraine, which allegedly crossed the border with Poland, does not exceed 700 km, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The military body emphasized that the planning of the operation against targets in Ukraine did not include any in Poland. The Kremlin stated that EU and NATO leaders accuse Russia daily and "without arguments" of alleged provocations.
RESPONSE
The claim is demonstrably false. Visual evidence of some of the crashed Gerbera drones that entered Poland shows that they contained extra fuel tanks that would allow them to fly longer than their normal reach of 600 km. Radar data showed that the drones came from Belarus or Russia through Ukrainian air space.
The incident led NATO to launch a new defence initiative in its eastern flank. Three days after the drone incursion in Poland, Romania denounced another violation of its air space by a Russian drone, adding weight to allegations about these incidents being intentional.
Sowing doubts about Russia’s actual illicit actions and offering alternative explanations and culprits to deflect Russia’s responsibility is a frequent pro-Kremlin disinformation technique.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that the EU Mission in Kyiv was likely hit by a Ukrainian antimissile, that Ukraine, not Russia, killed Ukrainian politician and former Maidan leader Andriy Parubiy, that that accusations about Russian war military crimes are unacceptable as there are a lot of fakes in this topic, or that Russia is falsely accused of misdeeds by simply affirming that its responsibility is “highly likely”.