On November 15, while Ukraine was heavily bombarded by the Russian army, a missile hit Poland, causing many concerns. While the investigation into the origin of the shooting is ongoing and the track of an accident is privileged, several photos have gone viral on social networks. One was mistakenly attributed to the missile responsible for the explosion, which killed two people in the village of Przewodow, about 6 km from the Ukrainian border.
Two photos of missile debris have been particularly shared in recent hours on social networks. But the photo on the left below, showing debris in daylight, was not taken on November 15, 2022. 20 Minutes sorts it out.
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By performing a reverse image search, we can find occurrences of this photo. The first shares date back to October 8, 2020, and refer to what appears to be another accident: debris from a missile had been found in the Caucasus mountains, near Chirag in Dagestan. Russian media, like RBCalso used this photo, attributed to a user of the Russian social network VK, to illustrate this explosion in 2020. At the time, the thesis evoked was that of an accident linked to the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan for the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
In some posts, the origin of this photo is mentioned and it is used as a point of comparison with the photo on the right, to allow the identification of the missile (and therefore to try to guess who fired it).
A photo shared by a Polish journalist
The photo of the debris, on the right, taken at night, was widely shared in the Polish media from the Twitter account of Mateusz Lachowski, a Polish journalist and PolsatNews correspondent in Ukraine, without this photo having been taken up by the agencies Press. Other photos of the site of the explosion, showing the trailer of an overturned tractor, have on the other hand been published by Reuters for example.
The tracks of a KH-101 or S300 missile have been mentioned on social networks. On Twitter, the Polish Minister of Justice, Zbigniew Ziobro, indicated on November 16 that “debris of the Russian S300 missile, used by the Russian and Ukrainian armies, were found” on the spot. The Polish president considered “highly probable” that it was an “unfortunate accident” due to a Ukrainian projectile.
For its part, NATO indicated on November 16 that it had “no indication” to attribute the fatal explosion in Poland to “a deliberate attack” against this country. “Our preliminary analysis suggests that the incident was likely caused by a Ukrainian air defense system missile fired to defend Ukrainian territory against Russian cruise missiles,” Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.