Pentagon says cannot confirm reports about missiles striking Poland

The US military does not have evidence to confirm the reports about an alleged stray missile killing two people in Poland, Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brigadier General Patrick Ryder told reporters on Tuesday. 

The Defense Department cannot “corroborate those reports,” Ryder said, adding that the military were “looking into this further” and vowing to provide an update on the situation when the US has more information about the incident.

When pressed by journalists on an earlier AP report, citing a US intelligence official and claiming it was Russian missiles that had struck Poland, Ryder once again insisted that the Pentagon has “no information to corroborate” such reports but is “looking into it.”

His comments came as Poland’s government convened an emergency meeting to discuss an incident that saw at least two people killed in the Polish town of Przewodow in the Lublin region, not far from the border with Ukraine. Some media then claimed the blast, which hit a grain drier, was caused by a “stray missile” strike. 

The Polish authorities did not confirm these reports, while government spokesman Piotr Mueller called on media and the public “not to publish unconfirmed information.”

The incident occurred amid a large-scale missile attack that Russia launched at Ukraine. The Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushenko called it the “most massive shelling of [Ukraine’s] energy system since the beginning of the war.” President Vladimir Zelensky earlier said that at least 85 missiles had been launched at Ukraine.