Polish PM heads to crash site after unidentified object enters airspace

Prime Minister Donald Tusk headed to eastern Poland on Thursday after an unidentified object entered the country's airspace and crashed in an uninhabited area during a large-scale Russian missile attack on western Ukraine, officials said.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk

PAP/Wojtek Jargiło

Government spokesman Adam Szłapka said Tusk was travelling to the eastern Lubelskie region, where the object is believed to have come down near the village of Tarnawa-Kolonia.

Tusk said he had convened a coordination team including Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz and senior security officials following what he described as a violation of Polish airspace during Russia's overnight missile barrage against western Ukraine.

"Emergency services have been working at the scene for many hours and are keeping me informed of all the circumstances," Tusk wrote on social media.

Earlier on Thursday, Poland's Operational Command said an unidentified object moving westward was detected in Polish airspace at 3:40 a.m. local time.

An F-16 fighter jet was scrambled to intercept and identify it, but the object disappeared from radar screens six minutes later before it could be positively identified.

A Mi-24 helicopter subsequently located what the military described as the probable impact site in an uninhabited area near Tarnawa-Kolonia in eastern Poland.

Defence Minister Kosiniak-Kamysz said authorities were working to determine the nature of the object.

"It was an extremely difficult night for our air defence and our surveillance and threat detection systems," he wrote on X.

He said information had been continuously coordinated among law enforcement services and passed to Poland's top officials.

"Work is now underway to determine what type of object fell near Tarnawa-Kolonia," he said.

Niezwykle ciężka noc dla naszej obrony powietrznej, systemów obserwacji i wykrywania zagrożeń. Dziękuję gen. I. Nowakowi i @DowOperSZ, wszystkim, którzy dziś koordynowali, obserwowali, analizowali i reagowali na wydarzenia nad Ukrainą i w naszej przestrzeni powietrznej.… https://t.co/RssjKTKAec

— Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz (@KosiniakKamysz) July 30, 2026

Kosiniak-Kamysz thanked Operational Commander Gen. Ireneusz Nowak, the Operational Command of Poland's Armed Forces and personnel involved in monitoring, analysing and responding to developments over Ukraine and in Polish airspace.

Police said officers later found a crater and fragments of an unidentified object in a field near Tarnawa-Kolonia. The site was secured, and military authorities, security services and prosecutors were investigating the incident.

Teren został zabezpieczony przez policjantów. https://t.co/PP9vCNunsu

— Polska Policja 🇵🇱 (@PolskaPolicja) July 30, 2026

As of Thursday morning, the military had yet to identify the object or say whether it was directly linked to the Russian missile attack on western Ukraine.

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Source: IAR, PAP, polskieradio24.pl