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Polish military acknowledges unintentional violation of Belarusian airspace

The incident was brief, according to the armed forces’ command

Mi-24 Polish Air Force EPA/Jakub Kaminski, archive

Mi-24 Polish Air Force

© EPA/Jakub Kaminski, archive

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Belarus registers second air intrusion from Poland this month

WARSAW, April 30. /TASS/. The Polish armed forces’ command has acknowledged the April 29 violation of Belarusian airspace, as follows from a post uploaded to Twitter.

"On April 29, while performing a routine night-time patrol mission in Poland’s airspace an aircraft violated the state border with Belarus. The incident was unintentional, casual and brief," the tweet says.

Earlier on Friday, the Belarusian Defense Ministry said it had identified a second air intrusion from Poland this month: a Mi-24 helicopter stayed within Belarusian airspace near the villages of Kozlovichi and Terebun for about a minute.

In connection with the incident Poland’s military attache was summoned to the Belarusian Defense Ministry on Friday. The Polish military diplomat was told there had been no results yet of a probe into the violation of the Belarusian state border on April 12 this year.

The Belarusian Defense Ministry then said that an unidentified aircraft violated the state border only to return to Polish territory. The Polish Defense Ministry denied the accusations, saying that its military planes performed no flights near the border between Poland and Belarus on the evening of April 12.

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