Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said an object that crashed into a field in eastern Poland in the early hours of Thursday was probably a Russian missile.
The unidentified object caused a 10m-wide (33ft) crater a short distance from the village of Tarnawa Kolonia, about 100km (62 miles) from the border with Ukraine during a large-scale Russian attack on the cities of Lviv, Kyiv and near Kryvyhi Rih.
Tusk said initially that “all the indications” were that the missile that violated Polish airspace was a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile, during a specially convened meeting in the eastern city of Lublin.
He then went to the site of the incident and said that according to military experts the majority of “recovered fragments point to it being a Russian Kh-101 missile”.
Although no casualties had been reported in Thursday’s incident near Tarnawa Kolonia, the Polish prime minister made clear it was being taken very seriously.
There was no immediate threat as it had not landed in a built-up area, he said, adding that “we were prepared to shoot it down if had continued its flight”.
Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said about 20 objects were seen close to Polish airspace overnight and pyrotechnical analysis was being carried out.
Ukraine’s acting Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha had earlier declared definitively that a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile had “crossed into Poland as part of Russia’s massive strike against Ukraine, violating Nato airspace”.
Tusk said he was in contact with fellow European leaders and the head of the European Council António Costa said Russia’s “massive combined strike against Ukraine” had underlined again that “Russia’s aggression is a threat to the security as a whole”.
At least eight people died and dozens more were wounded across Ukraine, including six members of one family in a village near Kryvyih Rih. Dozens more were wounded in Lviv, not far from Ukraine’s western border with Poland.
A number of Russian drones and one unarmed Russian missile have landed in Poland since Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine began in February 2022.
Two Polish farmers were killed by a missile that landed just over the border from Ukraine in November 2022, but that was believed to have been a Ukrainian air defence missile responding to a Russian attack.
Poland’s military detected the object at about 03:40 on Thursday (01:40 GMT) and sent an F-16 fighter jet to intercept it before it disappeared minutes later from radar systems. A military helicopter was then sent to search the area.
Air raid sirens blared in Lublin and Krasnystaw further to the south-east because of the Russian airstrikes in neighbouring Ukraine. Residents in Tarnawa Kolonia reported hearing a loud bang at about 04:00 and police found the crash site about an hour later.
The Polish leader had met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Lublin the previous evening as Zelensky was returning from talks with US President Donald Trump.
