Warsaw will demand explanations from Moscow for “a new airspace violation”

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: Beata Zawrzel / NurPhoto / NurPhoto via AFP 3:24 p.m., March 24, 2024

Poland will demand explanations from Moscow for "a new violation of airspace" by a Russian cruise missile and will summon its ambassador, the Polish Foreign Ministry said on Sunday. The Polish military said early Sunday that a Russian cruise missile launched against towns in western Ukraine violated Polish airspace for about 40 seconds.

“The object flew into Polish space near the village of Oserdow (east) and remained there for 39 seconds,” the army said on the X service, stressing that the missile was observed by the military radars throughout the flight. “Poland will demand explanations from the Russian Federation for a new violation of the country's airspace,” ministry spokesman Pawel Wronski subsequently declared in a statement.

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The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs indicated in the afternoon that "the ambassador of the Russian Federation would be summoned by Minister Radoslaw Sikorski to provide information and explanations." “The rest of our action will depend on these explanations and this information,” added Andrzej Szejna on Polsat News television. "This is normal, because this is not the first time that Polish space has been violated by a missile from the Russian Federation. It is the third time, as far as we know," he said. He underlines.

A similar incident in December

Another incident of this type took place in December when a Russian missile entered Polish airspace before leaving this space a few minutes later, in the direction of Ukraine. In December 2022, another missile from Russian cruiser KH-55, 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 this NATO member country.

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 a collective defense commitment from the Atlantic Alliance .