WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland’s Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said on Thursday that the army was aware of a possible missile heading towards the country in December but failed to inform the government.
Poland has been on alert for possible spillover of weaponry from the war in neighbouring Ukraine, especially since two people were killed near the border last November by what Warsaw concluded was a misfired Ukrainian air defence missile.
Polish media have reported in recent days that a military object found in a forest in northern Poland in April was a Russian KH-55 missile, and that Polish services had seen an object entering the country’s airspace in December but then lost track of it.
Blaszczak said an inspection he requested showed that Armed Forces Operational Command had received information from Ukraine about the object, but failed to take appropriate action.
“It was 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 space, which may be a missile,” Blaszczak said.
“According to the findings of the inspection, the operational commander fail to perform his duties of informing me (…) and other services provided for in the procedures about the object that appeared in Polish airspace.”
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki reiterated on Thursday that he heard about the existence of the military object found in a Polish forest for the first time in April.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz; Karol Badohal and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; Editing by Alison Williams and Christina Fincher)
