A Russian missile passed through Polish airspace Friday, entering from and then back into Ukraine, the Polish army said, as Russia pummelled Ukraine with one of the biggest missile attacks of the war.
"Everything indicates that a Russian missile entered Polish airspace... It also left our airspace," General Wieslaw Kukula, chief of the general staff of the Polish armed forces, told reporters.
The missile was in Polish airspace for three minutes, said Maciej Klisz, operational commander of the Polish army.
"We sent our forces, fighter jets, to intercept it and shoot it down if necessary but the duration and the flight path... made this impossible and allowed the missile to leave Polish territory," Klisz said.
Earlier on Friday, Polish authorities said an object had entered its airspace from Ukraine but did not specify what it was.
In a television interview, Colonel Jacek Goryszewski, spokesman of the operational command of the armed forces, said: “The object arrived from the Ukrainian border.
“There was intense shelling of Ukrainian territory at night so this incident could be linked to that.”
Goryszewski added the incident occurred near the border city of Zamosc and the object had been tracked by radar “from the moment it crossed the border to the point where the signal disappeared,” AFP reports.
This happened “in the morning hours” and Poland had “activated available forces and means at its disposal.”
ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 7, 2024
In November 2022, a Ukrainian air defence missile fell in the Polish village of Przewodow near the border, killing two civilians.
The explosion occurred at a grain storage site near a school about six kilometres from the border during another intensive Russian bombardment of Ukraine.
There was initial doubt about whether the missile was Russian, raising concern that NATO could become directly involved in the war as member state Poland is covered by the alliance's collective defence agreement.
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