Poland summons Russian envoy over ‘missile incident’

24 Mar, 2024 22:54 / Updated 2 months ago
A projectile fired at Ukraine violated Polish airspace, the country’s army has claimed

Warsaw summoned the Russian ambassador on Sunday after claiming that a missile launched at Ukraine had briefly entered Polish territory.  

According to the Operational Command of the Polish army, a Russian air-launched missile entered Polish airspace for roughly 40 seconds at 4:23am local time near the southeastern village of Oserdow. The intended target of the strike was in western Ukraine, it said. 

“Poland will demand explanations from the Russian Federation in connection with another violation of the country’s airspace,” the Foreign Ministry added in a statement on its website.

Moscow has not commented on the matter. The Russian Defense Ministry reported during a briefing on Sunday that its warplanes had carried out strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

In November 2022, a missile crashed in the Polish village of Przewodow, near the border with Ukraine, killing two farmers.

Officials in Kiev quickly claimed that the projectile had been fired by Russia. Polish President Andrzej Duda, however, said that the missile had likely been fired by a Ukrainian air defense system, and that there was no evidence that the projectile was of Russian origin.