Russian missile struck Poland during large-scale attack on Ukraine, Polish PM says

A Russian missile landed in Polish territory during a large-scale Russian strike on Ukraine, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said, though no one was injured.On Wednesday night and into Thursday morning, Russia launched an estimated total of 83 missiles of various types at targets across Ukraine, concentrating on Kyiv, Krivoy Rog, and Lviv, according to open source information. In addition to the large number of missiles launched in general, Kh-101 cruise missiles made up an unusually outsized total, at around 52. One of these Kh-101 missiles is alleged by Polish authorities to have ventured deep into Polish territory, 55 miles past the Ukrainian border, ultimately landing harmlessly in a field near the village of Tarnawa Kolonia in Lublin Voivodeship.Tusk held an emergency meeting on Thursday, during which he stressed caution around the investigation. “So far, everything indicates that we are dealing with a Kh-101 ballistic missile — a Russian one,” he said.“But we don’t want to jump to conclusions before the detailed investigation is complete,” Tusk added. “We will want to be 100% certain as to what kind of missile it was and who fired it.”The Kh-101 is actually a cruise missile, rather than a ballistic missile. The Kh-101 is subsonic and flies close to the ground, unlike a ballistic missile, which flies into the Earth’s atmosphere and plunges to its target at hypersonic speeds.Cruise missiles aim to hug the terrain to avoid easy detection and interception, but are much easier to intercept than ballistic missiles. They are also susceptible to electronic interference, unlike ballistic missiles, which may cause them to travel off course.On the other hand, NATO strategists have suspected that Russia has been deliberately prodding NATO defenses to test its resolve throughout the conflict, mostly with drones or flights that briefly enter NATO airspace.The Russian Ministry of Defense said its forces carried out a “massive strike” with air, ground, and sea-launched missiles, targeting “defense industry enterprises, telecommunications, and logistics centers” in cities across the country.The incident immediately raises questions about Poland’s air defenses, which failed to intercept the missile. Assuming the Kh-101 was flying at its cruise speed of around 440 miles per hour, it would have been in Polish airspace for at least 7.5 minutes if it had taken a straight path, by far the longest incursion of the war. Cruise missiles don’t typically take a straight flight path, meaning it was likely in Polish airspace for longer.Tusk appeared to preempt such criticism, implying that letting the missile continue its flight was a deliberate decision.“We were ready to shoot down this missile if it continued its flight,” he claimed.Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said the incident marked “An extremely tough night for our air defense, observation and threat detection systems.”Russian missiles and drones have ventured into Polish airspace several times earlier in the war, but Thursday was the first time a missile had directly impacted Polish territory. It was also the largest impact of the war, leaving a massive crater in a field. CCTV footage showed the moment of impact in the early morning.The Russia-Ukraine war has spilled over into NATO territory several times in the form of drone and missile incursions. The only fatalities, however, came on Nov. 15, 2022, when two Poles were killed after a Ukrainian S-3000 air defense missile veered off course and struck Polish territory. On the night of Sept. 9 to 10, 2025, nearly two dozen Russian drones entered Polish airspace over seven hours, prompting an air defense response that downed up to four of them, the first time Russian drones had been shot down over NATO territory.The most politically significant incursion was in May, when two Ukrainian drones presumably headed for Russia instead hit oil infrastructure in Latvia. Though no one was killed or wounded, the incident sparked an uproar, as the government’s response was considered delayed and inadequate. The drones impacted near the city of Rezekne, located nearly 40 miles from the Russian border, yet they went undetected.LATVIAN GOVERNMENT COLLAPSES OVER FALLOUT FROM TWO UKRAINIAN DRONES CRASHING IN ITS TERRITORYThen-Prime Minister Evika Silina cast blame on Defense Minister Andris Spruds and fired him shortly after, saying the drone incursion “demonstrated that the political leadership of the defense sector failed to fulfill its promise of safe skies over our country.”Spruds was a member of the allied Progressives party, pushing them to withdraw from the governing coalition, stripping them of a majority, and collapsing the government.