The drills took place at a training ground in the southern Polish town of Lubliniec in late October, the biznesalert.pl website reported.
They followed a recent wave of Russian attacks against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure using Iranian loitering munitions, or kamikaze drones, according to biznesalert.pl.
Protection of critical infrastructure
Recent weeks have also seen sabotage attacks on the Nord Stream Russia-to-Germany undersea gas pipelines, as well as a series of energy incidents in Europe, including a temporary power blackout on the Danish Baltic Sea island of Bornholm and a leak in the Polish section of the Russia-to-Europe Friendship (Druzhba) oil pipeline, the website said.
In response to these developments, NATO has moved to step up protection of critical infrastructure, it noted.
Meanwhile, Norway has put its armed forces on higher alert and is teaming up with allies to better safeguard energy facilities in the North Sea, which are used to deliver gas to Poland via the Baltic Pipe project, among other uses, biznesalert.pl reported.
Polish security services hold drills to counter UAV attacks
Poland's ABW, the Military Intelligence Agency (SWW) and other security services held drills to test the vulnerability of Poland’s public space and critical infrastructure to UAV attacks, officials said.
The ABW said in a statement: “An important aspect of the drills in Lubliniec was the confirmation of the usefulness of experiments carried out during the exercise, and the knowledge they produced, in the context of hybrid tactics and sabotage-and-diversion activities that may be undertaken against Poland’s security and defence capabilities by hostile state actors (special services) and non-state actors (terrorist organisations).”
Last month's exercises were a follow-up to earlier activities conducted by the ABW since 2021 "to counter threats associated with extremist use of improvised explosive devices as well as chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear substances (CBRN)," an official told reporters.
In July, drills were held at a training range in Zielonka near Warsaw.
Wednesday was day 259 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: biznesalert.pl, Reuters, tpcoe.gov.pl