Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said Thursday that the military was aware of a possible missile heading into Polish airspace in December, but a careless commander failed to tell anyone about the incident. The reaction of the minister appeared after the Polish mass media announced the discovery of the object. In April, a Russian KH-55 missile was found in a forest in northern Poland, Agerpres reports.

Poland is concerned about possible accidental incursions of this kind into its territory in the context of the war in neighboring Ukraine, especially after a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile launched during a Russian airstrike landed in Poland in November, killing two people there.

According to Polish media reports of recent days, an object was discovered that entered Polish airspace in December. According to the same reports, a cyclist accidentally discovered the mysterious object in April in a forest in northern Poland, about 500 kilometers from the eastern border, and his subsequent analysis revealed that it was a Russian KH-55 air-to-surface missile. All this time, the Polish government did not say anything about this incident.

“The operational commander failed in his obligations to inform me and the other services.”

On Thursday, the Minister of Defense of Poland said that he then requested an investigation into the incident, establishing that the Operational Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine had received information from Ukraine about an “unidentified aerial object” heading towards Poland. , but this command did not take appropriate measures. But the Polish military and their American colleagues present in Poland monitored the movement of the object.

“It was established that on December 16, the air operations center subordinated to the operational commander received information from the Ukrainian side that an object, which could be a missile, was approaching Poland’s airspace,” Minister Mariusz Blaszczak confirmed. “According to the results of the inspection, the operational commander did not fulfill his obligations to inform me (…) and other services with prescriptions in the procedures related to the object that appeared in the airspace of Poland,” he clarified Polish official. .

For his part, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki also assured on Thursday that he learned about this object only in April, after it was discovered in a forest near the city of Bydgoszcz, a city where NATO institutions and weapons factories are located and important Polish military forces.

According to Polish media, the missile had inscriptions in Cyrillic, but was not equipped with explosives, the information has not been confirmed by the government.

• Poland strengthened the border with the Russian enclave Kaliningrad “security perimeter”

In their attacks, the Russians use missiles supplied by Ukraine

Kyiv investigators have found several Kh-55 missiles, manufactured on Ukrainian soil in the 1970s, among the debris left after some Russian attacks, and it is likely that some of the bombers used to launch them were also transferred by Ukraine to Russia after dissolution of the Soviet Union as part of the Budapest Memorandum.

It was an international agreement under which Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees received from Russia and the West. The X-55 missiles were transferred as part of the deal because they can also carry a nuclear warhead.

“All Tupolev-160 and Tu-95 ballistic missiles and strategic bombers have been handed over. Now these bombers are using Kh-55 missiles against us. We would rather hand them over to the USA,” said General Sibitsky.

A report published late last year by Conflict Armament Research (CAR), which monitors the illicit use of weapons in conflicts, based on evidence gathered by Ukrainian investigators, showed that Russia continued to produce new missiles despite Western sanctions against its arms industry.

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