Poland’s Armed Forces Major General Maciej Klisz said on Thursday that all forces had been mobilized into locating the object.
This included searches from the air which covered more than 3,200 square kilometers, and ground searches covering more than 250 square kilometers.
Satellite images of an area of 310 square kilometers where the object was likely to fall were also analyzed.
But on Thursday the search was called off, with Klisz saying: “As a result of this process and the undertaken analysis, I can say that with high likelihood the air space of the Republic of Poland was not breached on August 26,” adding that “data have not changed, what changed is our assessment of the situation.”
The search began after a missile or unmanned aircraft was thought to have entered Polish airspace in the early hours of August 26.
The supposed infringement coincided with a
massive barrage of rockets and drones launched by Russia against Ukraine.
Following his announcement that the search had been abandoned, Klisz added that all actions that had been and continue being undertaken “are aimed at providing the highest level of security for Polish citizens in the context of the threat posed by the means the Russian Federation employs to attack Ukraine.”
To boost Poland’s air defenses, the military began the ‘Eastern Lights’ operation on August 1.
Since the launch of Russia’s full-scale invasion against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Poland’s airspace has been breached several times.
In November 2022, a missile fell on the village of Przewodów in the eastern Lubelskie province, close to the border with Ukraine, resulting in two deaths.
In December of that year, a Russian Kh-55 rocket fell into a forest near Bydgoszcz, in northern Poland. The information about the remains of the rocket being found was released in April 2023.
There were also several instances where an object would cross into Polish air space close to the border with Ukraine for a period of several seconds only to then leave.
