"I cannot rule it out. (Our) allies are also not ruling it out," Jacek Siewiera, the head of the Polish National Security Bureau, said in an interview on private broadcaster TVN24 when asked whether he thought the breach was more likely a provocation instead of an accident.
"It is difficult to assume that a 40-kilometer-(deep) breach from the border of Poland was accidental. This type of trajectory violates the airspace in a very significant way," he said.
Polish military officials in late December said that an object they identified as a Russian guided missile had breached the country's airspace on Dec. 29 from the direction of its border with Ukraine before exiting within three minutes of entry.
RIA Novosti News agency quoted Andrei Ordash, Russia's charge d'affaires in Warsaw, as saying after he was summoned on Dec. 29 to Poland's foreign ministry that the country had provided no proof of a border violation.
Siewiera said that the recent change of government in Warsaw and among Poland's top military officials may also have been a factor.
"The administration in the Kremlin is aware that, at a very difficult moment in Poland, government is being taken over by an administration that has not been in power for eight years," he said. "For this reason the risk of testing is high."
Siewiera also pointed to what he called recent disruptions to the global positioning system (GPS) in Poland and the Baltic region as worrisome.
"If we add incidents such as the disruption of the GPS system ... which seems to be, well, non-specific let's say, it is actually very concerning to military planists.
"It concerns the jamming of the allied signal near the Suwalki corridor; around the ports of Gdynia through which allied (military) aid arrives; and the Danish straits," Siewiera said, "and it does not affect (Russia's) GLONASS system," which is Russia's equivalent of the West's GPS.
(Reporting by Karol Badohal)
