ALSO SEE: Russia Pounds Ukraine in New Air Attack, Killing 8, Including Children

NATO and Poland scrambled military aircraft when a missile apparently fired by Russia landed deep inside Polish territory, as Moscow launched deadly long-range attacks across Ukraine that killed at least nine people.

The missile landed and exploded about 90 kilometers (55 miles) into Polish territory early Thursday, leaving a massive crater in the middle of a field, local authorities said.

“We were prepared to shoot down the missile if it had continued its flight,” Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk told an emergency government meeting, according to his office on X. “All indications suggest that it was a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile.”

Two NATO fighter jets, a NATO refueling aircraft, a Polish early warning aircraft and a Polish helicopter were deployed to counter the threat, a spokesperson for the alliance told CNN.

NATO will “continue to take all necessary measures to defend NATO territory, General Alexus G. Grynkewich, the alliance’s Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, said in a statement to CNN.

Still, there are no reasons to think Poland was the intended target, Tusk said later when he visited the crater site, according to Reuters.

Poland had earlier reported scrambling fighter jets in response to a major Russian attack on Ukraine, which hit large swathes of the country, killed at least eight people, including children, and left dozens more injured or trapped under rubble.

An intentional Russian attack so deep inside a NATO member’s territory would be an escalation in Moscow’s yearslong war on Ukraine. Thursday’s incident is not the first time Poland has reported a “Russian-made” missile landing on its soil – but this one reached unusually far. In November 2022, one struck and killed two people but that incident was only 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) from the Ukrainian border.

The attacks come days after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to the United States to again plead for more air defenses, as Russia fires more ballistic missiles into Ukraine and intensifies its air assaults on the country’s cities. As a result, more Ukrainian civilians have been killed this month than in any since April 2022. At the same time, Kyiv is emphasizing its ability to hit deep inside Russia, attacking Wildberries facilities, often described as “Russia’s Amazon,” across the border.

Deadly strikes in Ukraine

This wave of attacks killed at least eight people across the country, according to its foreign minister Andrii Sybiha, including six members of a single family.

In the village of Radushne, near Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, Olena and Artem Voronov and four children in their family were killed after a ballistic missile blew a family home “into smithereens,” as Zelensky described it. Authorities are still looking for the four other children believed to be in the house when the missile truck, but have warned it is unlikely anyone survived.

Graphic video from Radushne showed bodies strewn amid the rubble of a shattered building, with fires still burning.

Two unseen women could be heard speaking. “We’ve pulled one child out. There are still some lying over there,” one said.

“There are children here. There are many children,” the other said.

In Lviv, emergency workers rescued an injured 10-year-old boy, who was carried away on a stretcher, as they raced to save people trapped under rubble after an attack on a residential building.

At least 54 people across the country were wounded, Ukrainian authorities said on Thursday.

The attack, which used more than 70 missiles and 280 drones, also damaged or destroyed dozens of homes, businesses and infrastructure facilities, Zelensky said on Telegram Thursday.

Ukraine intercepted more than 260 drones, according to Zelensky, in what he said was a commendable feat given a “critical shortage of air defense missiles from our partners.”

Missile crater in Poland

European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, strongly condemned Russia’s Thursday attack on Ukraine and the lone missile landing in Poland, before doubling down on their support for Kyiv.

NATO chief Mark Rutte echoed that sentiment, and added that the alliance’s commitment to Ukraine is “unwavering.”

The missile crashed in an undeveloped area near the village of Tarnawa-Kolonia in Lublin province, Poland’s army said. Polish police said residents reported hearing a powerful blast.

Separately, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said a Russian cruise missile had “crossed into Poland as part of Russia’s massive strike against Ukraine” in a post to X.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said it carried out a “massive strike using long-range precision weapons from land, air, and sea” as well as attack drones on military sites across Ukraine, in a statement posted to Telegram Thursday. Moscow has not yet commented on the missile landing in Poland.

Poland’s army said the country’s air defenses observed at least a dozen missiles over western Ukraine, which posed a potential threat to Polish airspace.

On his way home on Wednesday, Zelensky stopped in the Polish city of Lublin – not far from the site of the next day’s crash – to meet with Tusk. The two leaders discussed “the outcomes of (Zelensky’s) visit to the United States and the security of Poland, Ukraine, and all of Europe,” according to a post to X by Tusk.

Poland has routinely scrambled jets in response to Russian attacks on western Ukraine, though they have rarely entered its territory. NATO fighter jets shot down multiple Russian drones that violated Polish airspace last September, denouncing Moscow for “absolutely dangerous behavior.”