Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak spoke about a russian cruise missile that flew into the western part of Poland in mid-December and was found only recently. He noted that the Polish military did not report it to the government and did not properly organize the search for the missile.
Source. This was reported by the BBC.
According to the Polish press, the X-55 cruise missile, fired on December 16 from a russian aircraft from the airspace of Belarus, flew several hundred kilometers over Poland and fell in the western half of the country, in a forest near the city of Bydgoszcz. It was discovered by a local resident only in late April.
Mariusz Blaszczak said that the inspection he ordered after the discovery showed that the Polish military had received information about the missile from their Ukrainian colleagues, but had not done what they were supposed to.
"It has been established that on December 16, the air operations center subordinate to the operational commander received information from the Ukrainian side about an object approaching Polish airspace, which could have been a missile," Blaszczak said.
"According to the findings of the inspection, the operational commander failed to fulfill his duties and did not inform me and other services, as provided for by the procedures in case of an object in Polish airspace," Blaszczak continued.
According to him, he first heard about the missile only in April, after its wreckage was found.
According to the minister, the search for the crashed missile was also not organized properly: only a police patrol was sent to the area of the crash, only three days later, on December 19, a helicopter was sent to search and this modest search operation was called off the same day.
Background. In November 2022, during another russian shelling of Ukraine, a rocket fell on Pshevodov, a village about 6 km from the Ukrainian border. The explosion killed two people – men who were near the weighing area of a grain complex. The missile that landed on Polish territory was probably an accidental strike by Ukraine's air defense, not a russian attack, Poland and NATO said on Wednesday.
At the same time, the NATO Secretary General said that it was moscow, not Kyiv, that was ultimately to blame for starting the war in the first place and launching the attack that provoked Ukraine's defense.
"This is not Ukraine's fault. russia bears the ultimate responsibility because it continues its illegal war against Ukraine," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels.