A Russian missile may have struck the territory of Poland, a NATO member, during an overnight assault on neighboring Ukraine, according to Polish authorities, an event that would risk bringing Russia closer to direct confrontation with the Western military alliance.
“So far, everything indicates that we are dealing with a Kh-101 ballistic missile — a Russian one,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland told an emergency meeting on Thursday.
“But we don’t want to jump to conclusions before the detailed investigation is complete,” he added. “We will want to be 100 percent certain as to what kind of missile it was and who fired it.”
Mr. Tusk appeared to have incorrectly identified the missile. The Kh-101 is a cruise missile, not a ballistic missile.
Investigators had not officially identified the object, which crashed near the village of Tarnawa Kolonia in southeastern Poland, by midday Thursday. The village is just 50 kilometers, or 31 miles, south of where Mr. Tusk and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine met on Wednesday, in the city of Lublin.
Mr. Tusk said it was “an unusual coincidence” that the object struck so close to where he and Mr. Zelensky had met.
“We were ready to shoot down this missile if it continued its flight,” Mr. Tusk said.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said on social media that a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile had crossed into Poland, but did not specify whether the weapon had hit the country.
Poland is a member of the NATO military alliance, which holds that an attack on one ally is an attack on all. Representatives for NATO did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday. Russia did not immediately comment on the Polish and Ukrainian claims.
Earlier in the day, Polish authorities had said that an “unidentified object” had crossed into the country’s airspace overnight and that police officers later found a 10-meter crater on a field in southeastern Poland, along with debris from the object.
Russian missiles have briefly entered Polish airspace during previous attacks targeting western regions of Ukraine, which border Poland, but the missiles have never hit Poland itself. Any confirmed strike on a NATO member could sharply escalate tensions between the military alliance and Russia.
In a statement, Poland’s military said it had been monitoring at least a dozen Russian missiles flying over western Ukraine overnight, including what was described as “an object” that approached the Polish border around 3:29 a.m. local time but then changed its direction and headed east.
Around 10 minutes later, the military statement said, an unidentified object was detected in Polish airspace. Before an F-16 fighter jet that was scrambled could intercept it, however, the object disappeared from radar. Polish authorities sent a helicopter crew to investigate and found what the military statement called “the probable crash site of the object” near the village of Tarnawa Kolonia, in the southeastern Lublin province.
Poland’s defense minister, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, said on social media Thursday morning that it remained unclear what the object was or from where it originated. He called the incident “an extremely tough night for our air defense, observation and threat detection systems.”
“Clarification is now underway regarding what type of object fell in the vicinity of the town of Tarnawa Kolonia,” he said.
Ukrainian authorities used the event to press again for more deliveries of Western air defense systems to Ukraine, saying they could help defend European countries from Russian attacks.
“This is yet another clear demonstration that strengthening Ukraine’s air defense now is urgent and serves as a guarantee for the protection of the entire Euro-Atlantic community,” Mr. Sybiha said on social media.
Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting from Warsaw.
