Poland said it’s investigating an unidentified object that crashed on its territory close to the border with Ukraine during an intense Russian missile attack.
Air defense radars registered the object over Polish airspace before it came down near the eastern village of Tarnawa-Kolonia, the armed forces Operational Command said Thursday in a post on the X platform.
The frontline NATO member state said the incident took place at 3:40 a.m. amid “intense combat activity by the Russian Federation’s long-range air force.” Radar tracked the movement of at least a dozen missiles operating over western Ukraine, it said.
An F-16 fighter jet on duty was directed to the area of the object that was moving westward in order to identify and intercept it, according to the command’s statement. The object then disappeared from the radar and an Mi-24 helicopter crew located the probable crash site near the village that’s been secured by search and rescue services.
The government’s spokesman Adam Szlapka wasn’t immediately available to comment. The village is about 100 kilometers from the border with Ukraine.
It’s the latest in a series of incidents registered by Poland and other NATO allies as Russia continues waves of drone and missile attacks on Ukraine since President Vladimir Putin ordered the 2022 full-scale invasion. Officials in Warsaw blamed Russian intelligence for an explosion on a busy rail route to Ukraine in November, two months after 19 Russian military drones flew deep into Polish airspace.
Poland sought consultations with North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies after the drone incident in September, calling it an “act of aggression.” Fellow NATO member Romania shot down a drone that breached its airspace last week for the first time since the invasion.
A stray missile killed two people in a Polish village of Przewodow, near the Ukrainian border, in November 2022. That incident was later attributed to Ukrainian forces trying to shoot down scores of Russian rockets.
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