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obviously to legally protect itself (should a drone owner(russia) cry foul of a bad shoot/damage/declaration of war..) poland would need to have done some kind of investigation to declare good reason to shoot it down. EG it came within polish borders.. if poland said it was 100km away from poland, russia could call it a message from poland declaring war on russia.. which would be a bad case to initiate
Why would they need to legally protect themselves? Russia denied sending them, so why would Russia even mind? And which court you think would defend individual doing this?
no country, including poland cant just shoot anything. lets make up a country lets call it "dogwagtailistan" now lets say dogwagtailistan decided to airstrike a 'google street' aircraft or high altitude starlink satellite(none weaponed reconnaissance aircraft).. they need to justify the strike especially if its one countries attack on another countries property, the international courts would mediate/judge this. by showing intel. they can justify the attack and close the case/squash the court action before it goes that far, deeming it justified
as for individual doing this.. well the height the drones can achieve i dont think it would be some 'individual' shooting it down with a handgun..
,, but when it comes to military actions they need to classify the attack via intel and such to justify the hit on a drone as a military concern. else it could be seen as a declaration of war instead of self defense
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The point is that since there is a precedent of those drones hitting Poland, the justification is much easier. You set an intervention / drone exclusion zone of 100 km or whatever, and you advise Ruzzia that anything on this range is considered a threat based on their previous actions. Hardly an escalation, as it is merely defensive, but quite proportional.
Poland is not downing a random object or a civil or military plane, They are downing an explosive, unmanned object over the territory of Ukraine, not over Ruzzia, so that can hardly be classified as an act of war.
My guess is that NATO is going to respond very blandly in appearance, but be sure there will be quite a bit of "retaliation" under the radar.