POLAND said today that multiple Russian drones had entered its territory overnight and were shot down with help from Nato allies, describing the incursion as an “act of aggression” carried out during a wave of strikes on Ukraine.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said that the strikes had targeted Ukraine’s military-industrial complex in the country’s western regions, with no planned targets on Polish territory.

“We are ready to hold consultations with the Polish Ministry of Defence on this issue,” the ministry said.

However, several European leaders claimed to believe that the incursion amounted to an intentional escalation of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Poland said some of the drones had come from Belarus, where Russian and Belarusian troops have begun gathering for military exercises starting tomorrow.

Polish airspace has been violated many times since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but there has been nothing on this scale in Poland or in any other Western nation along the eastern flank of Nato and the European Union.

A Nato spokesman said it was the first time the alliance had confronted a potential threat in its airspace. Nato met to discuss the incident, which came three days after Russia’s largest aerial attack on Ukraine since the war began.

“Russia’s war is escalating, not ending,” European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.

“Last night in Poland we saw the most serious European airspace violation by Russia since the war began and indications suggest it was intentional, not accidental.”

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told parliament that 19 violations had been recorded over seven hours, but that information was still being gathered.

Eight crash sites have been found, a government spokesperson said. Dutch fighter jets came to Poland’s aid and intercepted some drones, the Netherlands’ defence minister said.

“This is an act of aggression that posed a real threat to the safety of our citizens,” the Polish military’s operational command said on social media.

French President Emmanuel Macron called on Russia to put an end to “this reckless escalation,” while Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala called the violation “a test of Nato countries’ defence capabilities.”

Belarusian Major General Pavel Muraveiko said today that as Russia and Ukraine had traded drone strikes overnight, his country’s air defence forces had tracked “drones that lost their course” after they were jammed.

They had warned their Polish and Lithuanian counterparts about “unidentified aircraft” approaching their territory, he added, which “allowed the Polish side to respond promptly to the actions of the drones by scrambling their forces on duty.”