Ukrainian fighter jets tried to shoot down Russian missiles near the border with Poland on Thursday; however, at least one breached Polish airspace, Western officials said.
US Army Col. Martin O’Donnell, a spokesperson for NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, told Business Insider NATO and Poland activated their air and ground defenses “in response to a Russian missile of currently unknown type that entered Polish airspace” and crashed inside the country.
O’Donnell said two Polish F-16s, a NATO A330 refueling aircraft, a Polish Saab 340 airborne early warning plane, and a Polish Mi-24 helicopter were all scrambled in response.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said at the weapon’s crash site that, per the “military’s assessment regarding the missile fragments, everything points to the fact that it was a Russian Kh-101 missile.”
He said there is no indication to suggest that Poland was deliberately attacked. He added that Ukrainian fighter jets had tracked and attempted to destroy Russian missiles up to the border.
The Kh-101, known by NATO as the AS-23 Kodiak, is an air-launched cruise missile with a maximum speed of around 600 mph that Russia frequently uses in large-scale attacks against Ukraine. Russia launched over 60 Kh-101s as part of an overnight barrage, the Ukrainian Air Force said in a statement.
Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said a Kh-101 cruise missile crossed into Poland, “violating NATO airspace” during the attack.
Earlier on Thursday, the Polish military said that radars recorded at least a dozen missiles above western Ukraine. One “object” came within a few miles of the border at roughly 3:30 a.m. local time, but changed directions and headed east.
10 minutes later, at 3:40 a.m., an “unidentified object” was detected inside Polish airspace heading west, but it then disappeared from radars at 3:46 a.m. before it could be identified, the military said. It located “the probable crash site” near Tarnawa-Kolonia in southwestern Poland. The site is 60 miles from the border.
Tusk later said that the munition left a 10-meter-wide, 5-meter-deep crater that was consistent with the explosive payload of a Kh-101.
Neither Russia’s defense ministry nor its embassy in the US responded to a request for comment on the Polish and Ukrainian assessments.
Russian drones have crossed into Polish airspace repeatedly since the start of the full-scale war against Ukraine, including dozens of aircraft in a September 2025 incident that prompted NATO to surge air defense assets to the Eastern flank. However, it is much rarer for a Russian missile to violate Polish airspace. Previous incidents were also much closer to its border with Ukraine.
O’Donnell said that NATO “is in close contact with the Polish authorities about the violation of Poland’s airspace.”
This latest incident comes amid a string of NATO airspace violations. Last weekend, Russian drones crossed into Romania several days in a row, and F-16 fighter jets were scrambled each time to intercept them.
Russia launched more than 70 missiles — including 61 Kh-101 cruise missiles — and nearly 300 drones as part of the massive overnight attack on Ukraine, which intercepted most of the munitions. At least eight people across the country were killed, though.
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