F-16s Scrambled as Russian Missile Enters NATO Airspace
In a sign of the dangers Russia’s continuing invasion of Ukraine pose, Poland, a NATO member, scrambled F-16 fighter jets after a Russian missile strayed briefly into Polish airspace during a major missile attack on Ukraine.
It was Russia’s third big missile attack on Ukraine in the past four days, and the second to target the capital, Kyiv.
The governor of the Lviv region, Maksym Kozytskyi, said on the Telegram platform that critical infrastructure was hit, but he didn’t specify what precisely was struck. No deaths or injuries were reported.
Armed Forces Operational Command of Poland, a member of NATO, said in a statement that there was a violation of Polish airspace at 4:23 a.m. in Poland (11:23 p.m. Saturday EDT), by one of the cruise missiles launched by Russia against towns in western Ukraine.
The object entered near Oserdow, a village in an agricultural region near the border with Ukraine, and stayed in Polish airspace for 39 seconds, the statement said. It wasn’t immediately clear if Russia intended for the missile to enter Poland’s airspace. Cruise missiles are able to change their trajectory to evade air defense systems.
Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz later told reporters in a televised news conference that the Russian missile would have been shot down had there been any indication that it was heading towards a target in Poland.
He said Polish authorities monitored the attack on Ukraine and were in contact with Ukrainian counterparts. Polish and NATO F-16s were activated as part of the strategic response.
Poland has been a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since 1999. Under Article 5 of the NATO charter, an attack on any individual member is considered an attack on all.
He said the missile penetrated Polish airspace by about a half-mile to around a mile.
“As last night’s rocket attack on Ukraine was one of the most intense since the beginning of the Russian aggression, all the strategic procedures were launched on time and the object was monitored until it left the Polish airspace,” he said.
On the diplomatic front, the Polish foreign ministry said that it would “demand explanations from the Russian Federation in connection with another violation of the country’s airspace.”
“Above all, we call on the Russian Federation to stop the terrorist air attacks on the inhabitants and territory of Ukraine, end the war, and address the country’s internal problems,” the statement read.
Andrzej Szejna, a deputy foreign minister for the Warsaw government, told the TVN24 broadcaster that the foreign ministry intended to summon the Russian ambassador to Poland and hand him a protest note.
Henryk Zdyb, the head of the village of Oserdow near the Ukraine border, said in an interview with the daily Gazeta Wyborcza that he saw the missile, saying it produced a whistling sound.
“I saw a rapidly moving object in the sky. It was illuminated and flying quite low over the border with Ukraine,” he told the paper.
Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there have been a number of intrusions into Polish airspace, triggering worry in the European Union and NATO member state and reminding Poles and the rest of Europe of how close the war is.
“We have to come to terms with the fact that the war is taking place right next to us, and we are part of the confrontation between the West and Russia,” commentator Artur Bartkiewicz wrote in the Rzeczpospolita newspaper Sunday.
In 2022, two Poles were killed in a missile blast. Western officials blamed those deaths on a Ukrainian air defense missile that went astray, but also accused Russia of culpability because it started the war, with the Ukrainian missiles launched in self-defense.
On Saturday night, one person was killed and four others were wounded in a Ukrainian missile attack on Sevastopol on the Russia-occupied Crimean Peninsula, city Gov. Mikhail Razvozhaev said on his Telegram channel.
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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