The first major incident occurred on November 15, 2022, when a missile—believed to be an anti-aircraft weapon launched from Ukraine—landed in Przewodów, a village in the Lubelskie province near the Ukrainian border.
The explosion killed two men working at a grain drying facility. This event marked a turning point in the perception of the conflict’s proximity to Poland.
The case of a missing missile
The next incident occurred on December 16 of the same year, during another wave of massive Russian airstrikes against Ukraine.
A Ch-55 cruise missile—reported to be without a warhead—appeared to have traversed a significant portion of Polish airspace before ultimately crashing in a forest near Zamość, a town in southeastern Poland.
The Ministry of Defense, then led by Mariusz Błaszczak of the Law and Justice party, now in opposition, did not report the discovery of missile remains in the forest until late April 2023, when a random passerby was said to have found the remains.
The case caused a storm in the media and among politicians; the opposition at the time called for Błaszczak’s resignation, who was accused of concealing the fact that a Russian missile had fallen deep inside Polish territory and was not located until several months later.
At the time, there was a report in the Ministry of Defense, according to which the whole situation was supposed to be the result of negligence on the part of the Operational Command. Błaszczak himself argued that after December 16 he was not informed about the matter.
However, in March of 2024, Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk informed Poland’s lower house of parliament that as head of the Ministry of Defense, Błaszczak knew about the incident since December 16 and was given a report on the matter on December 17.
In response to Tomczyk’s accusations, Błaszczak doubled down on his earlier statement.
More violations
In the following months, the public was informed of two more violations of Polish airspace in connection with Russian attacks on Ukraine.
The Operational Command reported on December 29, 2023, that on that morning an unidentified aerial object flew into Polish airspace from the Ukrainian border, which was observed by radar from the moment it crossed the border to the point where the signal disappeared.
Another violation took place on March 24, 2024, when a Russian long-range missile flew into Polish airspace in the area of Oserdów (Lubelskie province) and stayed there for 39 seconds.
Most recent incident
The most recent violation occurred on Monday when a likely unmanned aerial vehicle, possibly a Shahed drone, was detected over the Ukrainian city of Chervonohrad and is believed to still be within Polish territory. A search operation is underway in the Tyszowce municipality in eastern Poland.
The object was confirmed by three radar stations during a massive Russian airstrike, which targeted multiple regions in Ukraine, including areas close to the Polish border. The object disappeared after traveling 25 kilometers into Poland.
