Polandʼs highest control body, the Supreme Control Chamber, has started an audit of the Ministry of Defense due to possible violations in connection with the fall of a Russian missile on Polish territory. They found out about it only after 5 months.
RMF FM writes about it.
Auditors will examine the procedures the Defense Ministry used in response to the incident, as well as how communication between the defense minister and the military, including generals, took place.
During the audit, they plan to demand and seize certain documents of the Ministry of Defense of Poland.
The head of the chamber Marian Banas informed that they want to establish how well the Polish borders are guarded and why they found out about the incident so late.
"It needs to be established whether the cooperation was really at the appropriate level, whether the proper procedures were followed and who is responsible for the fact that the proper procedures did not work," he explained.
- On April 27, it became known that in Poland, near the city of Bydgoszcz, the wreckage of an object similar to an air-to-ground missile was found. There were inscriptions in Russian on the wreckage. There was no combat part in it.
- Later, RMF FM journalists found out that in mid-December 2022, during another shelling of Ukraine, a Su-34 aircraft from Belarus was used. An object that flew to the country from Belarus appeared on Polandʼs radars. Polish services tracked the object, but lost it near Bydgoszcz. The Polish military, despite their obligations, did not inform the prosecutorʼs office about the violation of Polish airspace. The investigators did not receive any reports in this case and, as the journalists managed to find out, the proceedings in this case were opened only at the end of April 2023.
- Polish Minister of National Defense Mariusz Blaszczak later also confirmed that a Russian cruise missile fell near Bydgoszcz. According to the minister, in December the Polish military did not inform him about the fall of the Russian missile, which they tracked after receiving a report from the Ukrainian side and then searched for it. However, the search operation was quickly canceled due to blizzards.