A Russian cruise missile that was aimed at the cities of western Ukraine entered Polish airspace for 39 seconds and was detected by radars during the early hours of , so Poland has put its Air Force on alert, the authorities announced. from the country. "All measures have been taken to guarantee the safety of Polish airspace. Therefore, citizens may be bothered by noise, especially in the southeast," the message adds.
Poland borders Ukraine in the southeast, where a large movement of Russian planes and missiles was recorded throughout the night.
"Poland will demand explanations from the Russian Federation for a new violation of the country's airspace," ministry spokesman Pawel Wronski later stated in a statement. The Deputy Foreign Minister indicated in the afternoon that "the ambassador of the Russian Federation would be summoned by the Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski to provide him with information and explanations." "The rest of our actions will depend on these explanations and this information," added Deputy Minister Andrzej Szejna on Polsat News television.
It is the third time that a Russian missile violates Polish airspace, according to Polish authorities. Another incident of this type took place last December when a Russian missile entered Polish sky for a few minutes and then returned to Ukraine.
In December 2022, another Russian KH-55 cruise missile, capable of carrying nuclear warheads, fell in Poland, but its remains were not found until April 2023 by a passerby in a forest near Bydgoszcz in the north, about 500 km from the eastern border of the NATO member country.
And in November 2022, a Ukrainian missile fell on the Polish village of Przewodow, near the border with Ukraine, killing two civilians. Before its identification, the missile's fall on the Polish village had raised fears that NATO could be drawn into the conflict in a major escalation of the war in Ukraine, with Poland protected by an Atlantic Alliance collective defense commitment.
It is likely that the missile detected in Poland later fell on Ukrainian soil. Ukraine reported this morning nighttime Russian attacks on Kyiv, the capital located in the center of the country, and Lviv, in the west. Russia carried out a wave of attacks against energy facilities and military factories in Ukrainian territory, among which NATO equipment transferred to Kyiv was destroyed, the Russian Defense Ministry reported today.
"Tonight, the Russian Aerospace Forces carried out a strike with high-precision, long-range weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles against electric power facilities, the gas production industry and places where aquatic drones are assembled and tested," it notes. the Russian military note.
As a result of the attacks, "the work of industrial enterprises that produced and repaired weapons, military equipment and ammunition was disorganized." In addition, "foreign-made military equipment and weapons transferred to Ukraine by NATO countries were destroyed," Defense added.
The Defense Ministry also reported that Russian air defense systems destroyed 22 Vampire missiles launched by Ukraine in the Russian region of Belgorod, the closest Russian city to the Ukrainian border.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces attacked two Russian ships (the Jamal and the Asov), a communications center and other infrastructure in Sevastopol, on the Crimean peninsula, which belongs to Ukraine but has been occupied by Russia since 2014.
The Jamal was designed in Poland in 1987, has a crew of 98 people and is 112.5 meters long. The Azov is more than 173 meters long, was designed in 1972 and has a crew of more than 400 people.
