Poland protests to Russian ambassador over missile incursion
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- Poland summoned the Russian ambassador on Friday after a Kh-101 missile landed in the village of Tarnawa Kolonia in the Lublin region on Thursday; Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced the summons and no casualties were reported.
- Foreign Ministry spokesman Maciej Wewior told journalists the ambassador was informed of Poland's "unequivitable condemnation of hostile actions directed against the security of a sovereign state" and that "any escalation at the border of the European Union and the North Atlantic alliance is unacceptable."
- Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz reported the missile was produced near Moscow in the second quarter of this year, writing that "Russia is using newly produced missiles to strike Ukraine" — confirmation, he argued, that "Russian wartime stockpiles have been depleted."
- Polish investigators linked the recovered missile to a Russian strike on Ukraine that killed at least eight civilians and injured more than fifty, and an arriving Ukrainian expert "did not have the slightest doubt" about the weapon's origin or model.
- NATO and European leaders swiftly backed Poland and condemned Russia; the incident is the latest in a string of drone and missile incursions into Poland, Romania and the Baltic states that has fueled fears the Ukraine war could spill over alliance borders.
Why it matters: The missile's Q2 production date near Moscow is the first physical evidence in the article that Russia is burning through newly manufactured weapons — not just Soviet-era reserves — to sustain nightly strikes on Ukraine. If accurate, that shifts the war's economic burden onto Russia's active defense industry and raises the long-term cost of every barrage for Moscow.
