Patrolmen first attempted to calm the men down, and asked for their ID papers after spotting them in the early hours of Friday morning, according to Polish media. The men refused, and began throwing rocks and paving stones at the officers. Police drew their service weapons and fired several warning shots into the air, to no effect, and then turned to deadly force.
As a result, 13 foreigners, all of them Ukrainian and Georgian nationals, were detained, four of them sent to hospital with gunshot injuries to their legs. One officer was also hospitalized with a head injury.
Disgraced ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's deportation to Poland earlier this month led to numerous jokes in Russian social media about whether the two events were somehow related. The top comment in RIA Novosti's article on the incident quipped that "this group of bandits in Poland was waiting for their master Saakashvili, to have another go at breaking into Ukraine."
