WARSAW (Reuters) -The object that hit a house in an eastern Polish village earlier this month was likely a missile fired by a Polish aircraft that was intended to shoot down Russian drones in the NATO-member’s airspace, a government minister said on Wednesday.
Polish authorities initially said the home in the village of Wyryki-Wola had likely been hit by one of the 21 Russian drones that entered Poland’s airspace on the night of September 9-10.
However, Rzeczpospolita daily reported on Tuesday, citing sources, that the house was hit by a missile fired from a Polish F-16 fighter jet whose guidance system malfunctioned.
“Everything indicates that it was a missile fired by our plane, defending Poland, defending the fatherland, defending our citizens,” the Minister Responsible for Poland’s Special Services Tomasz Siemoniak told TVN24.
Polish President Karol Nawrocki, a political rival of the centrist government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, said on Tuesday that he would demand clarification about the incident.
Tusk said on X on Tuesday that all responsibility for the damage in Wryki-Wola lay with Russia, which he said was responsible for orchestrating a provocation using drones.
“The appropriate services will inform the public, the government, and the president about all the circumstances of the incident after the (investigative) proceedings are completed,” Tusk wrote.
Russia said its forces had been attacking Ukraine at the time of the drone incursions and that it had not intended to hit targets in Poland.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said the maximum range of the drones used did not exceed 700 km “which makes it physically impossible for them to have reached Polish territory.”
Poland has dismissed this argument and says the drones were sent into Polish airspace intentionally to test the capabilities of Poland and NATO to respond.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
