WSJ: KH-55 Missile Fired From Belarus Fell Near NATO Training Center In Poland
- 31.05.2023, 10:59
This has become a serious challenge to the security of the Alliance's airspace.
A cruise missile launched during a Russian barrage of Ukraine crossed into Poland last December then slammed into a patch of forest about 10 miles from a NATO training center, exposing challenges to defending the alliance’s airspace, The Wall Street Journal reports.
While the Polish government has so far declined to identify the debris pending an investigation, security analysts and Western officials say the evidence points to a variant of the KH-55, a cruise missile that Russia had been using to fool Ukrainian air-defense systems.
In November, the UK Ministry of Defense reported that Russia was taking older cruise missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons, stripping them of their warheads and then launching them into Ukraine as decoys.
Polish President Andrzej Duda, who received an internal report on the missile earlier this month, has declined to discuss the incident.
“Everything that is being discussed by the media right now is just speculation,” Duda told WSJ in an interview.
A NATO official declined to comment on the missile incident, but confirmed that Duda spoke with General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg earlier this month, after the debris was found.
“NATO constantly keeps our air and missile defense posture under review to ensure deterrence and defense for all Allies,” the official said.
On April 27, the Prosecutor General of Poland announced that fragments of an unknown air force object had been found in a forest in the north of the country. This information was confirmed by the Ministry of Defense. Journalists said the debris looked like fragments of an air-to-ground missile. There were inscriptions in Russian on the wreckage, and the warhead was missing.
On May 10, the Technical Institute of the Polish Air Force announced that fragments of a Russian KH-55 missile had been found near the city of Bydgoszcz.
On May 11, Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said that the object was indeed a Russian missile that fell near the Polish city of Bydgoszcz on December 16, 2022. On this day, the Russians launched a massive attack on Ukraine, firing 74 missiles.
Polish President Andrzej Duda said the missile incident “did not pose a serious threat” to the country's security.