Poland on January 21 summoned the Belarusian chargé d’affaires to formally protest a series of incursions by unidentified airborne objects that crossed from Belarus into Polish airspace. Warsaw’s move follows a January 17 notification from the Polish National Security Bureau that dozens of unexplained objects entered Polish airspace overnight; police and border guards subsequently recovered multiple meteorological-style balloons carrying cartons of cigarettes lacking Polish excise stamps.
The Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman, Maciej Wewiór, said Warsaw had made clear to Minsk that it would not accept such behaviour. Authorities described the objects as weather balloons, but the cargo — untaxed cigarettes — pointed to organised smuggling rather than a simple navigational mishap, raising questions about whether criminal networks are exploiting unconventional delivery methods or whether the flights reflect a more permissive posture on the Belarusian side of the border.
The incident lands against a backdrop of strained Poland–Belarus ties. Since 2021 the two countries have been locked in a security standoff featuring a migrant ‘hybrid attack’ on the EU’s external border, tighter Polish border controls and repeated diplomatic complaints. Even if this episode is a commercial smuggling operation, the method — airborne drops crossing an international boundary — is liable to be read politically in Warsaw and Brussels as an erosion of border discipline and a challenge to sovereignty.
For Warsaw, the immediate task is practical: secure the border, disrupt smuggling routes and catalogue evidence for possible legal or punitive follow-up. For the EU and NATO partners, the incident is another stitch in a larger pattern of irregular cross-border activity from Belarus that complicates regional security. If such incidents proliferate, they could prompt tougher measures from the EU, further degrade bilateral ties and harden Polish domestic politics around national security and border control.