Berlin to bolster Polish air defence after village hit

BERLIN has offered to deploy Patriot anti-aircraft missile systems in Poland after a deadly rocket strike just inside the Polish border with Ukraine, the German defence minister has said.

“We have offered to support Poland with [the] securing of its airspace with our Eurofighter [jets] and Patriot airdefence systems,” Christine Lambrecht, the German defence minister, told the Rheinische Post.

Two people died last week when a missile landed in the Polish village of Przewodow, four miles from the border with Ukraine. Warsaw and Nato said the explosion was probably caused by a Ukrainian air-defence missile launched to intercept a Russian attack.

“I welcomed the German proposal with satisfaction,” Mariusz Blaszczak, Poland’s defence minister, said on social media. “In my telephone conversation with the German side ... I will propose the system be stationed close to the border with Ukraine,” he said.

German Patriot units are already deployed in Slovakia, with Lambrecht saying Berlin was seeking to keep them there for longer, “until the end of 2023 and potentially even beyond”.