Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said an object that crashed in a field in eastern Poland was probably a Russian missile, after it was detected during a major Russian attack on neighbouring Ukraine.
The object struck near the village of Tarnawa Kolonia early Thursday, creating a crater about 10 metres (33ft) wide. The location is roughly 100km (62 miles) from Poland’s border with Ukraine, as Russian forces were carrying out strikes on the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.
Speaking at a specially convened meeting in nearby Lublin, Tusk said initial evidence pointed to a Russian Kh-101 missile. However, he stressed that Polish authorities wanted to establish with complete certainty both the missile’s type and who had launched it.
Ukraine’s acting Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said earlier that a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile had entered Polish airspace during Russia’s large-scale attack on Ukraine. He described the incident as a violation of NATO airspace.
Tusk said he had been in contact with other European leaders before travelling to the area. No casualties were reported from the incident in Poland, although the prime minister said the situation was being treated seriously.
Poland has previously recorded Russian drones and an unarmed Russian missile entering or landing on its territory since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In November 2022, two Polish farmers were killed when a missile struck near the Ukrainian border. Investigators at the time believed the missile was part of Ukraine’s air-defence response to a Russian attack rather than a deliberate Russian strike on Poland.
Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said around 20 objects had been detected close to Polish airspace overnight. Authorities were carrying out pyrotechnical analysis to establish exactly what landed near Tarnawa Kolonia.
Poland’s military first detected the unidentified object at around 03:40 local time on Thursday, or 01:40 GMT. An F-16 fighter was dispatched to intercept it, but the object disappeared from radar several minutes later. A military helicopter was subsequently deployed to search the area.
Air-raid sirens sounded in Lublin and Krasnystaw as Russian strikes hit neighbouring Ukraine, killing eight people. Residents of Tarnawa Kolonia said they heard a loud explosion at around 04:00, while police located the suspected crash site approximately an hour later.
The incident came just hours after Tusk met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Lublin on Wednesday evening. Zelensky was travelling back from talks with US President Donald Trump when the two leaders met.
