By Ananya Palyekar
WARSAW, Feb 7 (Reuters) – Poland’s Lublin and Rzeszow airports reopened on Saturday after authorities said they had ended military aviation operations including flights by NATO aircraft in the country’s airspace, triggered by Russian strikes on Ukraine.
There was no violation of Polish airspace, the Polish army’s operational command said. In a post on social media platform X, it thanked NATO and the German air force, “whose aircraft helped ensure safety in Polish skies today”.
“Operations of military aviation in our airspace, related to strikes by the Russian Federation on Ukraine, have been concluded,” the operational command said.
“Ground-based air defence and radar reconnaissance systems have returned to standard operational activities,” it added.
Ukraine said on Saturday that Russia had launched a massive air attack on Ukrainian energy facilities overnight, including hits on power stations in western Ukraine.
The Polish military operation was of a preventive nature and aimed at securing and protecting airspace in areas adjacent to threatened regions, Poland’s army said earlier in the day.
The two airports, both in southeastern Poland, had temporarily suspended operations as a precaution, the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency said earlier.
Both cities are close to Poland’s border with Ukraine, with Rzeszow being NATO’s main hub for arms supplies to Ukraine.
Flight tracking service FlightRadar24 posted on X that the airport closure involved NATO aircraft operating in the area.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration also issued a notice to airmen that both airports were inaccessible due to the military activity related to ensuring state security.
Rzeszow and Lublin airports also suspended operations last month, but the authorities said then that the military aviation operations were routine and there had been no threat to Polish airspace.
(Reporting by Ananya Palyekar, Shivani Tanna and Alan Charlish; Editing by William Mallard, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Aidan Lewis)
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