A suspected Russian cruise missile crashed into a field in eastern Poland early Thursday, leaving a 10-metre crater during a mass aerial assault on Ukraine that killed at least 13 people.
Polish air defences detected an unidentified object entering national airspace at 3:40 a.m., scrambling an F-16 fighter jet before the target vanished from radar six minutes later. An Mi-24 helicopter later located the impact site near Tarnawa-Kolonia, roughly 45 kilometres south of Lublin, where authorities found a crater and scattered debris of an unidentified object about two kilometres from residential buildings. Air-raid sirens sounded in Lublin and Krasnystaw for approximately 11 minutes. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the projectile was likely a Russian Kh-101 missile, a claim echoed by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha.
The incident coincided with a large-scale Russian bombardment of multiple Ukrainian regions, including strikes on Lviv that damaged apartment buildings and wounded 26 people. The Military Police, ABW, and SKW have opened investigations into the breach of Polish territory.