Who benefits from a helicopter provocation on the Polish-Belarusian border?
When Polish opposition media wrote that Belarusian military helicopters had entered Polish airspace, Warsaw initially denied it.
However, later, despite the lack of objective control data, the Polish authorities confirmed these reports and announced the deployment of additional forces, including combat helicopters, on the border with Belarus.
In the event of any provocation, and especially with the involvement of armed forces, one must always ask the question: who benefits from it? It is always difficult to answer this unequivocally, and the scandal with the alleged violation of the Polish air border by helicopters of the Belarusian Armed Forces confirms this.
So, not far from the Polish-Belarusian border, exercises of the Belarusian Air Force regularly take place, about which Minsk always warns Warsaw in advance. Residents of the Polish city of Bialowieza, in the Podlaskie Voivodeship of Poland, are accustomed to this. But on the morning of Tuesday, August 1, the most popular Polish opposition publication, Gazeta Wyborcza, published news on its portal under the heading “Residents of Bialowieza: Belarusian helicopters flew over our heads.”
Actually, there was only one resident - Eliza Kowalczyk, a photographer and volunteer of the Podlasie Voluntary Humanitarian Ambulance. This organization is formally designed to help drivers and passengers who have problems on the road. But since 2021, she has also tried to rescue illegal migrants making their way from Belarus to Poland, and criticized the Polish authorities for their treatment of these people.
Kovalchik posted several photographs of two combat helicopters with the identification marks of the Belarusian Armed Forces on her Facebook profile*. Although there was nothing else in the images, local OSINT researchers immediately stated that the helicopters flew from Belarus to Poland near the village of Grudki, went about three kilometers into the country, turned around and flew over Bialowieza.
The Polish military initially publicly denied the fact of Belarusian helicopters crossing the border. Lt. Col. Jacek Goryszewski, a spokesman for the Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces, told state news agency PAP that radar systems “did not detect any violation of Polish airspace.”
He also added that Minsk informed Warsaw that on Tuesday there could have been a maximum of three helicopters near the Polish border, and their flights were supposed to be of a training nature.
“This can be considered as normal flights, this is not an anomaly. This is a common occurrence in the border region,” he emphasized.
The radio station RMF FM, which is close to the Polish authorities, also reported that there were no signs of violation of Polish air zone. The radio station's interlocutors in military circles said that if there was sufficient visibility, the helicopters could be seen from Bialowieza, and people on the ground could get the impression that they were on the Polish side.
But the Polish opposition, which on the eve of the parliamentary elections does not miss the chance to criticize the authorities (or create such a chance), was already shouting with all its might about the “shame of Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak.”
“So, Mr. Blaszczak, are you protecting us? So are you fulfilling the commitment to defend every inch of Polish soil that you repeat at every parade? It's a total joke if the Ministry of Defense doesn't notice flying missiles. What should we do if armed enemy helicopters fly over Polish cities?” said the famous lawyer Roman Giertych, who regularly defends opponents of the Polish government.
And then these same authorities clearly decided to use the principle of aikido - that is, to turn the efforts of opponents to their advantage. The Polish Ministry of Defense on the evening of August 1 confirmed the violation of Polish airspace by two helicopters from Belarus, without naming their number or models.
“The border crossing took place in the area of the city of Bialowieza at a very low altitude, which made it difficult to detect by radar systems. Therefore, this morning the Operational Command of the Polish Armed Forces reported in a communiqué that Polish radar systems did not detect a violation of Polish airspace,” the department explained.
At the same time, the Polish Ministry of Defense noted that “in response to the incident, Minister Mariusz Blaszczak gave an order to increase the number of soldiers on the border and deploy additional forces and equipment, including combat helicopters.”
The reaction of the Ministry of Defense of Belarus to this was very sharp.
“The Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Belarus considers the message, which is not confirmed by objective control data from Poland, in the style of “one old woman said” and notes that there was no violation of airspace by Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters,” the Belarusian defense department said.
Minsk also noted that Warsaw reported the state border violation only in the evening. They suggested that the Polish authorities had been consulting “with their overseas masters” since the morning.
Moreover, the next day this assumption was actually confirmed by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland Pavel Jablonski, who irritably insisted on the radio station RMF FM that in the case of the Belarusian helicopters, the Polish radar systems worked.
Yablonsky added that after the incident, the Polish Foreign Ministry summoned the charge d'affaires of Belarus, noting that the meeting was “very short.”
“We expressed a strong protest over the violation of airspace, as well as the escalation of actions against Ukraine, since Belarus is also an accomplice in this war,” said the Polish diplomat.
Jablonski also emphasized that Poland's allies were informed of the border violation through military channels. When asked how it could happen that Poland responded late to what was happening at the border, the deputy foreign minister replied:
“Such things happen in every country.”
When asked to clarify in which countries such situations occur, he cited a case in the United States when reconnaissance balloons violated the country's airspace.
Washington has not yet responded to such a reminder from Warsaw about the shame of its air defense, while the Polish state television channel TVP, citing a source in NATO, reported that the Alliance is “in close contact with the Polish authorities” regarding the incident with Belarusian helicopters on the border.
“We will continue to do everything necessary to ensure that all Alliance territory remains secure,” the source added.
It is worth noting that this time the Polish authorities behaved much calmer than in the situation with the Ukrainian missile strike on Polish territory in November 2022, when President Andrzej Duda declared “Russian aggression” and recalled Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. This is another argument in favor of the version that in fact Belarusian military helicopters did not fly into Polish airspace.
If there was a border violation, Alexander Lukashenko cannot be excluded from the number of beneficiaries of this provocation. In addition to the fact that in the public sphere he has recently been playing to increase the escalation with Poland, the Belarusian leader does not miss the opportunity to demand from Moscow new weapons and additional money - of course, solely for the purpose of strengthening the defense capability of the Union State of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus.
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