A Polish home badly damaged during a Russian drone incursion into Polish territory is now being reported to have been hit by a falling rocket fired from one of the F-16 fighter planes attempting to shoot down the drones.
Regarding the drone incursion on September 10, the government used the damage as evidence of Russian aggression in a session of the UN Security Council.
News that the building, the roof of which was destroyed, was in fact hit by rocket that suffered a “guidance system malfunction” when fired from a Polish F-16 jet was revealed by the portal of the daily Rzeczpospolita on September 16.
The report has angered Polish President Karol Nawrocki and his allies in the opposition Conservatives (PiS) and Confederation parties.
For days after the drone incursion, the government had maintained that the damage to the house in the village of Wyryki in eastern Poland was a result of Russian aggression.
Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki used a photograph of the damaged property and blamed the Russians in his remarks during the UN Security Council’s September 12 deliberations on the incident.
Nawrocki’s chancellery issued a statement yesterday in which it protested that the President had not been kept fully informed on the matter and accused the government of concealing information.
“The President demands of the government an explanation about what happened in Wyryki. It is the government which has all the means at its disposal to speedily explain the matter,” he said.
“We cannot tolerate a situation in which information is being concealed. Facing a situation of disinformation and hybrid warfare, information communicated to Poles must be robust and verified.”
Former PiS prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said what he called the dishonesty of the government that was damaging public unity.
“When Russian drones flew over Poland we understood that unity is most important in the face of external aggression. But today this unity and trust are in tatters, obliterated by lies,” he said.
“The government has not only misled President Nawrocki but also all Poles. This betrays not only incompetence but is also endangering Polish security. What else is being hidden from us?”
Mariusz Błaszczak, the former PiS defence minister who currently leads the PiS parliamentary caucus, slammed the government for the “shambles” over the incident.
“The government has lost its way. It’s concealing information about the events in Wyryki fuels Russian propaganda,” said Błaszczak.
Joint leader of the right wing Confederation Party, Krzysztof Bosak, said: “The best way of destroying what’s left of public trust in Poland and to make Poles receptive to conspiracy theories and disinformation is to lie, manipulate and conceal facts in such delicate matters.”
The government responded to opposition concerns by blaming the Russians for the incident in Wyryki, arguing that had it not been for the drones entering Poland no Polish rockets would have been fired.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who leads the centre-left coalition government, posted on X: “The full responsibility for the damage sustained by the home in Wyryki falls on the authors of the provocation with the drones, namely Russia. We will inform public opinion and the president fully about the incident once the investigation is complete.”
He added: “Hands off our soldiers”, which irritated commentators as no one was critical of the military carrying out its tasks.
Defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz has rejected criticism that the government had concealed what was known about the incident from the President and the public.
He argued that all information was released once it was verified, although he did not explain why Bosacki chose to use Wyryki as an example of Russian aggression at the UN Security Council.
Interviewed by state radio Trójka today, Bosaki claimed that he had only learned about the house in Wyryki having been hit by a F-16 rocket from the Rzeczpospolita publication yesterday.
The drone incursion resulted in NATO planes, for the first time during the war in Ukraine, opening fire on Russian flying objects with four out of the 19 drones that flew into Polish airspace being shot down.
Some defence analysts have criticised the use of fighter planes because of the high cost involved in such an operation and the fact that it may have betrayed to the Russians that Poland and NATO do not have specific air defence systems against drones in place on the eastern flank of the alliance.
Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski has also been criticised by the Confederation Party for his repeated calls for NATO to shoot down drones over Ukraine so that they cannot enter Polish airspace.
The party said it saw those calls as making Poland the target of any Russian retaliation and an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine.
The events of September 10 are the second time there has been a dispute over whose rocket hit a Polish property.
The first was over one that fell in Przewodów in eastern Poland in late 2022 causing the death of two farm workers.
Ukraine insisted it was a stray Russian rocket but it was quickly established that in fact it was a Ukrainian air defence missile that landed in Polish territory accidentally having missed its Russian target.
