Poland summoned Russian Charge d’Affaires Andrey Ordash and demanded an explanation for an alleged violation of Polish airspace by a missile they claim to be Russian, the NATO country’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday evening.
Poland’s deputy foreign minister, Wladyslaw Teofil Bartoszewski, handed Ordash a note demanding an explanation of the incident and “an immediate cessation of such activities,” the ministry wrote.
The Polish military claimed that a Russian missile entered the country’s airspace from the direction of Ukraine before veering back over Ukrainian territory on Friday morning, without providing evidence that the projectile was of Russian origin.
The Russian charge d’affaires called the claim “unsubstantiated” in an interview with RIA Novosti, adding that Poland will not receive any explanations until it provides evidence.
Warsaw claims that the missile traveled around 40km into Polish airspace in the early hours of Friday morning. General Wieslaw Kukula, the chief of staff of the Polish armed forces, said in a briefing on Friday that the missile entered Poland for almost three minutes and then returned to Ukrainian airspace. “Everything indicates that a Russian missile entered Polish airspace,” Kukula said, adding that fighter jets were scrambled to intercept the projectile, but failed to reach it before it “left our airspace.”