NATO is considering shooting down Russian missiles if they come too close to the borders of NATO member states, Poland’s deputy foreign minister said Tuesday, two days after Warsaw said its airspace had been violated.

Poland’s government said Sunday that a Russian cruise missile fired overnight at cities in western Ukraine violated Polish airspace for 39 seconds.

The Polish Ministry of Defense assured that all anti-aircraft defense systems were activated and that this missile would be shot down if there was the slightest indication that it was heading for a target on Polish soil.

Yesterday, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Sejna told radio station RMF24 that “various considerations are being analyzed in NATO” following this incident, including the possibility of “missiles being shot down if they get too close to the borders” of the alliance’s member states, which include Poland.

But something that “can only be done with the agreement of the Ukrainian side and taking into account the international consequences”, added Mr. Seina.

Warsaw condemned yesterday Monday that Russia’s ambassador to Poland ignored an official summons to the Foreign Ministry to protest the missile incident.

Polish diplomacy later reported that Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski discussed the issue with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

During the conversation, Mr. Stoltenberg “reminded that NATO has greatly increased its vigilance and strengthened its positions on the eastern flank of the alliance, especially in Poland,” a senior official of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said yesterday .

Poland announced in late December that a Russian missile had violated its airspace en route to Ukraine before exiting it minutes later.

According to Polish authorities, a year earlier, another Russian KH-55 cruise missile — capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear warheads — crashed in Poland, but its wreckage was not found until April 2023 by a passing in a forest near Bydgoszcz (north), about 500 km from the country’s eastern border.

And, in November 2022, two people were killed when a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile landed in the Polish village of Sewodów, very close to the border with Ukraine.