Mateusz Morawiecki made the statement at a news conference on Friday, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Speaking to reporters in the village of Zielona, in central Poland, the prime minister said: “I am in constant contact with Defence Minister Mariusz Błaszczak and I have asked him to personally oversee the investigation and all the work designed to find a definite explanation” for the discovery of the military object near the north-central city of Bydgoszcz.
Morawiecki added he had "requested the whole dossier of the incident" from prosecutors and received it on Thursday, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s polskieradio24.pl website reported.
Morawiecki also told the news conference: “There is evidence to link this discovery, this equipment found a few days ago, with the information our security services obtained in December last year,” when a rocket flew over Polish territory, “and regarding which we were in constant contact with allies."
The prime minister added that during the December 2022 incident, “the F-35 [NATO] aircraft and our own planes took off to follow the trajectory of this … rocket that entered Polish territory.”
Morawiecki stated, as quoted by the PAP news agency: “For me, the most important thing is that Poland is secure and there have been no casualties. Meanwhile, this incident should be explained, down to the last detail.”
'Unidentified aerial military object'
Polish authorities said on Thursday that the remains of an "unidentified aerial military object” had been found in a forest near the north-central city of Bydgoszcz.
The Polish defence and justice ministries did not identify the object or say how long it had been there, the Reuters news agency reported.
The Polish defence ministry wrote on Twitter on Thursday morning: “The remains of an unidentified military object have been found in the vicinity of the village of Zamość, some 15 kilometres from Bydgoszcz.”
The tweet added that "the situation does not threaten the safety of residents” and “the location of the discovery is being investigated" by Polish officers and military police.
Meanwhile, Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro announced that prosecutors had launched a probe into the discovery, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s polskieradio24.pl website reported.
The area where the object was found is hundreds of kilometres from Poland's borders with Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, Reuters reported.
Later in the day, private broadcaster RMF FM said authorities believed the object could be part of an air-to-surface missile that most likely belonged to the Polish army.
Prosecutors probing the case said that "no traces of explosions or explosives were found at the site."
They added in a statement that "various hypotheses regarding the secured evidence" were being investigated.
The Polish army said on Friday that it was working with allies to supervise the country’s airspace and that “the situation on December 16 was fully under control,” polskieradio24.pl reported.
On December 16, Russia carried out one of its mass rocket attacks on Ukraine, targeting energy infrastructure and causing power outages across Ukraine, the PAP news agency said.
Friday is day 429 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, polskieradio24.pl, rp.pl