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Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has issued a sharp rebuke to Slovakia after the country’s foreign minister appeared to cast doubt on Russia’s responsibility for a drone incursion into Polish airspace last week.

Speaking in Kyiv, ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi said on 11 September: “A large number of Russian drones entered Polish airspace – this is an empirical fact that does not require belief.” He described the violation as a “deliberate escalation” and urged Slovakia not to “shift responsibility away from Moscow with inappropriate doubts, but to recognise reality as it is”.

The remarks followed comments by Slovakia’s foreign minister, Juraj Blanár of the ruling Smer party, who on 10 September condemned the breach of Polish territory but suggested the drones were intended for Ukraine rather than Poland. “I want to believe that the drones which entered Polish airspace were not aimed at attacking Poland, but were meant to end up in Ukraine,” Blanár told reporters before a cabinet meeting.

While Blanár reiterated Slovakia’s solidarity with Poland and support for Nato consultations under article 4, his suggestion drew swift criticism from Kyiv and from Slovakia’s opposition parties.

Slovakia’s cautious stance

The Slovak government has since said it does not absolve Russia of responsibility but wants the incident investigated further. The cabinet has refused to explicitly point the finger at Moscow.

Slovakia’s prime minister and Smer chair, Robert Fico, also struck a cautious note, stressing he would not be “provoked by political games” and would base his position only on “relevant sources of information”. He cited past incidents in which initial reports were later revised, pointing to the 2022 explosion in Poland that was initially blamed on Russia but later acknowledged to have been caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile.

Air defence debate rekindled

The row has revived a long-running domestic dispute over Slovakia’s air defences, weakened since the previous government donated its Soviet-era S-300 missile system to Ukraine in 2022. Fico has described the handover as “military sabotage”.

“It had been switched off [by Fico’s previous government] and stored in a hangar at the time of its donation,” the former defence minister Jaroslav Naď of Demokrati said in April 2025, adding that Slovakia’s airspace had effectively been left unprotected.

Temporary NATO deployments arrived after the donation but were later withdrawn, leaving the country exposed. Naď rejected accusations from both the opposition and the coalition that he had suggested the borrowed Patriot batteries would remain in Slovakia permanently.

Naď, who authorised the transfer of the S-300 system to Ukraine, has warned that Slovakia now lacks even limited anti-drone defences, accusing the current Fico government of delaying modernisation projects approved by Ľudovít Ódor’s technocratic administration in October 2023. These included the purchase of Israel’s Barak missile system and Poland’s Piorun man-portable launchers.

Politician and Hlas party leader Peter Pellegrini criticised Ódor’s cabinet in October 2023 for approving the air defence purchase instead of leaving the decision to the next government that was to be formed after the late-2023 elections. More recently, as Slovak president since June 2024, Pellegrini has warned that Slovakia is “barefoot” and “naked” without an air defence system.

Defence Minister Robert Kaliňák, also of Smer, has not ordered the Polish Piorun sets at all so far, and only signed the Barak contract just before Christmas 2024 – more than a year after Fico returned to power. According to Kaliňák, Slovakia should receive its first Barak battery later this year or in early 2026.

“If that happens, I’ll eat this table,” Naď said on 12 September. 

Naď and other former officials, including the former defence minister Martin Sklenár and the retired general Pavel Macko, have also warned that Slovakia’s current arsenal – ageing Igla shoulder-fired missiles, obsolete Kub systems with expired munitions and inactive German Mantis gun platforms – cannot provide nationwide protection.

According to Kaliňák, the Mantis systems are stationed at the Prešov military base but face a “serious problem” with their functionality. “Mantis is very small — that’s one of the first things — and it can cover about a single base, that’s about all it is capable of,” Kaliňák said.

Macko dismissed claims by Smer politicians that Slovakia is unprotected because it handed over the S-300 system to Ukraine. He argued that the S-300 was designed to shoot down aircraft, not low-flying drones. Macko said the S-300 “wouldn’t even detect those drones” and asked the government what had happened to the S-10 system designed to shoot them down.

Failed condemnation effort

Meanwhile, in the Slovak parliament, the drone controversy has further deepened political divisions. An opposition attempt to pass a resolution condemning the drone incident on 11 September was blocked by the ruling coalition of Fico’s Smer, Hlas and the far-right SNS. The European affairs committee dismissed the debate in just two minutes, prompting the opposition MP Vladimíra Marcinková to denounce the move as a “disgrace”.