A Russian Mil Mi-8 military helicopter penetrated Polish airspace for 42 seconds on Wednesday, flying up to 300 meters (984 feet) into Polish territory near the town of Braniewo before turning back, according to Poland's Operational Command.

The helicopter crossed from Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast at 11:08 a.m. local time. Polish military radar systems detected the aircraft, and the armed forces responded by scrambling fighter jets. Ground-based air defense units and other military assets went on standby for the duration of the incursion.

"The nature of the incident indicates that Russia is once again testing the readiness of our air defense," the Operational Command said in its statement. The command added that Polish air defense crews remain on round-the-clock watch.

The flight profile fits a pattern Warsaw has documented repeatedly since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022: short-duration entries by Russian military aircraft and drones that fall below the threshold of an armed attack but force NATO air defense assets to respond.

The Braniewo incursion is not an isolated event. On Feb. 11, 2025, a Russian Su-24MR reconnaissance aircraft entered Polish airspace over the Gulf of Gdańsk, penetrating roughly 6.5 kilometers (4 miles) and remaining inside Polish territory for about 72 seconds. Russia later acknowledged that incident and attributed it to a navigation-system malfunction.

Less than three months later, on April 25, 2025, another Russian military helicopter entered Polish airspace over the Baltic Sea's territorial waters. Poland assessed that incursion as an attempt to test its air-defense readiness — the same characterization the Operational Command applied to Wednesday's Mi-8 flight.

The most serious violation to date came on Sept. 9-10, 2025, when 19 Russian drones crossed into Polish airspace during a large-scale Russian strike on Ukraine. Poland scrambled fighter jets in response and subsequently requested NATO consultations under Article 4 of the Washington Treaty, the alliance's mechanism for consultations when a member's territorial integrity, political independence or security is threatened.

Since then, Poland has continued to scramble aircraft in response to Russian attacks on Ukraine and heightened military activity near its borders, although not every scramble has involved an actual violation of Polish airspace.

Each incursion carries operational costs for Warsaw. A 42-second violation still requires radar correlation, a fighter scramble and the activation of ground-based air defense readiness — a recurring demand on Polish and allied quick-reaction assets positioned along NATO's eastern flank.

For air traffic operations, the implications are more contained but real: the incidents cluster along Poland's northeastern border with Kaliningrad and the Baltic coast, corridors adjacent to civil air routes serving the region. None of the reported incursions has resulted in a disruption to civil aviation, according to the Operational Command statements.

The Operational Command's characterization — a deliberate test rather than an accident — stands in contrast to Russia's only formal acknowledgment in the sequence, the February 2025 Su-24MR incident, which Moscow blamed on a navigation malfunction. Poland has not accepted similar explanations for subsequent helicopter and drone incursions.

Wednesday's Mi-8 flight, with its penetration measured in hundreds of meters rather than kilometers, fits the lower end of the documented pattern. The February 2025 Su-24MR incursion reached 6.5 kilometers into Polish territory; the September 2025 drone wave involved 19 separate vehicles. Polish air defense crews will remain on continuous watch, the Operational Command said, as Warsaw expects further Russian probing of its airspace.