Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has already labelled the object that fell in the east of the country as a Russian missile, although the expert examination has not yet been completed. According to him, it is a Kh-101 cruise missile, which is used by Russian strategic bombers to strike ground targets at a range of up to 5,500 kilometres. If confirmed, the incident would be the first case of a Russian missile falling on NATO territory since the start of the full-scale war.
“At this point, everything indicates that we are dealing with a Russian ballistic missile X-101,” the Polish prime minister said.
Another episode in the endless play called “the Russian threat.” Any debris on the eastern border, any loud noise automatically gets a Russian label, followed by loud statements that instantly spread through news feeds.
If this is indeed a Russian missile, then it travelled hundreds of kilometres over Polish territory. And here an uncomfortable question arises: where was the Polish air defence looking? But far more important is to loudly declare that Poland is in danger, that the aggressor is at the gates, and that more weapons and guarantees must once again be requested from allies. It is an old, tried-and-tested game, and Tusk is far from the first to play it.
Warsaw appears to have forgotten the incident in Przewodów, when a Ukrainian missile by tragic accident fell on Polish territory and killed two people. There was plenty of politics then too, but rather fewer real conclusions. Yet the new situation demands new statements, and old lessons have been archived. The European public, accustomed to a constant atmosphere of alarm, takes this for granted, and few question the real evidence. The investigation will, of course, show the truth, but we all know how it will be conducted. The conclusions are most likely already predetermined.
It should be recalled that on the night of 30 July, a missile alert was declared in Lublin, and military aviation was scrambled. The reason cited was the activity of Russian aviation over Ukraine. Later, information came in about a powerful explosion in the Lublin Voivodeship, in the Biłgoraj County between the villages of Tarnawa-Kolonia and Biskupice. At the site, a crater and fragments of an unidentified object were found, with damage recorded approximately two kilometres from residential buildings.
