Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Thursday that an object which crashed in eastern Poland during Russia’s large-scale overnight assault on Ukraine was most likely a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile, raising fresh concerns over the conflict’s spillover into NATO territory.
The unidentified object created a crater approximately 10 meters wide near the village of Tarnawa Kolonia, about 100 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, during a wave of Russian strikes targeting the Ukrainian cities of Lviv, Kyiv, and areas near Kryvyi Rih.
Speaking at a specially convened meeting in the eastern city of Lublin, Tusk said that “all indications” pointed to the object being a Russian Kh-101 missile. After visiting the impact site, he added that military experts had concluded that most of the recovered fragments were consistent with a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile.
Although no casualties were reported, Tusk stressed that Polish authorities were treating the incident with the utmost seriousness.
“There was no immediate threat because the missile did not fall in a populated area,” he said, adding that Poland had been prepared to intercept it had it continued its flight through Polish airspace.
Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said around 20 aerial objects were detected near Poland’s airspace overnight and confirmed that pyrotechnic and forensic analyses of the debris are ongoing.
Ukraine’s acting Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha had earlier stated that a Russian Kh-101 missile crossed into Polish territory during Moscow’s massive overnight attack on Ukraine, describing it as a violation of NATO airspace.
Tusk said he had been in contact with European leaders following the incident. European Council President António Costa said Russia’s latest large-scale assault on Ukraine once again demonstrated that Moscow’s aggression poses a threat to the security of Europe as a whole.
The overnight attacks across Ukraine killed at least eight people and injured dozens more, including six members of one family in a village near Kryvyi Rih. Additional casualties were reported in Lviv, close to Ukraine’s western border with Poland.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, several Russian drones and at least one unarmed Russian missile have entered Polish territory. In November 2022, two Polish farmers were killed by a missile that landed near the border, although investigators later concluded it was most likely a Ukrainian air defense missile fired in response to a Russian attack.
According to the Polish military, the object was detected at approximately 3:40 a.m. local time. An F-16 fighter jet was scrambled to intercept it before it disappeared from radar a few minutes later. A military helicopter was subsequently deployed to search the area.
Air raid sirens were activated in Lublin and the southeastern city of Krasnystaw as Russian strikes targeted neighboring Ukraine. Residents of Tarnawa Kolonia reported hearing a loud explosion around 4:00 a.m., and police located the impact site roughly an hour later.
The incident came just hours after President Volodymyr Zelensky met with Prime Minister Tusk in Lublin while returning from talks with U.S. President Donald Trump.
