I knew nothing about Russian missile in December says PM

Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish prime minister, has accused the Rzeczpospolita daily of lying, and denied he was told in December about an unidentified military object that had entered Polish airspace, months before it was found and an investigation initiated.

In late April, the Defence Ministry announced that the remains of an unidentified military object, believed to be an unarmed Russian missile, had been found in a forest 15 kilometres from the central city of Bydgoszcz.

The Defence Ministry later revealed that the missile crashed on December 16, 2022, but an investigation was only launched after it was found.

On Thursday Rzeczpospolita wrote, citing its own findings, that both Morawiecki and Mariusz Błaszczak, a deputy prime minister and the defence minister, were informed on December 16 about "an unidentified object of unknown origin" by the operational commander of the Armed Forces, general Tomasz Piotrowski.

"Just like I said earlier, let me emphasise once again that I knew nothing about this incident (about the airborne military object - PAP) in December," Morawiecki said in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, on Thursday.

"I was informed about the incident in late April," he added. "The Rzeczpospolita daily published an absolute lie," he continued, adding that the article should be considered "a good example of the work of Russian propaganda."

"Nothing which has been written there is true," Morawiecki said.

The prime minister was in Moldova to take part in a summit of the European Political Community.