Home › Politics › Przewodów blast: who fired the missile?
Przewodów blast: who fired the missile?
Summary
A look back at the missile strike in eastern Poland on 15 November 2022 and the competing accounts of its origin.
What did a missile that killed two people in eastern Poland mean for the war next door? On 15 November 2022, a strike hit the village of Przewodów, near the border with Ukraine, and the question of who fired it quickly became the story.
The explosion came during Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. As reported at the time, US officials told the Associated Press that preliminary findings suggested the missile had been fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian missile. The US president, Joe Biden, then said the blast was caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile.
That account differed from the initial Ukrainian one. Kyiv first accused Russia of striking Poland, while Washington pointed towards a Ukrainian air defence missile.
What came later
The US assessment held. In September 2023, the Polish Prosecutor's Office stated that the explosion was caused by an out-of-control Ukrainian S-300 air defence missile. The incident was the first time a foreign missile had hit NATO territory during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The episode shows how quickly attribution can become a political question when a strike lands across a border. On 15 November 2022, two deaths in a Polish village depended on determining where the missile came from, and the early US findings pointed to Ukrainian air defence rather than a Russian strike.
