Russia on Wednesday denied responsibility for the fall of a missile on a Polish village near the border with Ukraine, which Warsaw itself deemed “highly probable” was a Ukrainian anti-aircraft projectile , “an unfortunate accident”.
The missile killed two men in the Polish village of Przewodow when it hit an agricultural building on Tuesday, leaving Poland reeling, its army on heightened alert, and raising fears of a further escalation in the war in Ukraine.
“There is no indication that this was an intentional attack on Poland,” Polish President Andrzej Duda told reporters on Wednesday.
“There is a high probability that it was a missile that was simply used by Ukrainian missile defense,” he continued. It is “probably an unfortunate accident, alas”, he added.
There is “no indication of a deliberate attack” in Poland, said NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg. The ambassadors of the member countries of the Atlantic Alliance met urgently on Wednesday in Brussels.
From Bali (Indonesia) where the G20 met at the summit, US President Joe Biden had also considered it “improbable” that the missile was fired by Russia.
“I will make sure that we can determine what exactly happened” before deciding on a reaction, he added after an emergency meeting Wednesday of the leaders of the major powers of the G7 (United States, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, Japan), in Indonesia, on the sidelines of the G20 summit.
” Detention “
Welcoming the “restraint” of the American reaction, Moscow denied any involvement in the incident in Poland.
“High-precision strikes were carried out only on the territory of Ukraine at a distance of more than 35 kilometers from the Ukrainian-Polish border,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement, according to which “the debris found in Poland” have been categorically identified by Russian specialists […] as an element of an anti-aircraft guided missile of the S-300 air defense systems of the Ukrainian Armed Forces”. »
The impact occurred around 2:40 p.m. GMT on Tuesday in Przewodow and killed two farm workers. The police established a cordon around the site, inaccessible.
” I’m afraid. I haven’t slept all night,” Anna Magus, a 60-year-old elementary school teacher in the village, told AFP. “I hope it was a stray missile because otherwise we are lost”.
Poland had convened its National Security Council urgently on Tuesday and summoned the Russian ambassador for “immediate detailed explanations”.
“We are dealing with the consequences of Russia’s actions. These consequences, for the first time since the beginning of the war […] affected Poland, Polish citizens were killed,” Pawel Jablonski, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister, told the PAP news agency on Wednesday.
Mao Ning, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called on “all parties concerned” to “remain calm and exercise restraint in order to avoid an escalation”.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for a “careful investigation” and warned against “hasty” judgments, while Paris called for “the greatest caution”, “many countries” in the region have the same type of missile. .
It is “absolutely essential to avoid the escalation of the war in Ukraine”, urged United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, calling for a “thorough investigation”.
On the Ukrainian side, the finger is pointed at Moscow.
The missile strike in Poland “is nothing more than a message from Russia addressed to the G20 summit”, said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by videoconference before the leaders gathered in Bali.
His head of diplomacy described as “conspiracy theories” the allegations according to which it could be a Ukrainian missile.
“Difficult” week
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 and still controls parts of it, despite a string of battlefield defeats in recent months.
Poland, which has a 530 km border with Ukraine, is a regional leader in terms of military and humanitarian assistance to its eastern neighbor. It is a member of NATO and some 10,000 American soldiers are on its territory.
The missile fell as Russia carried out massive strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure on Tuesday, which left millions of homes without power. Russian missiles hit cities across the country, including Lviv (west), near the Polish border.
The intense Russian bombing of Ukrainian infrastructure has been called by President Zelensky a “slap in the face of the G20”.
This summit is taking place without Russian President Vladimir Putin, who did not wish to speak there even by videoconference.
The strikes, which killed at least one person in kyiv, led to widespread power cuts in Ukraine and as far away as neighboring Moldova. Moscow on Wednesday denied targeting the capital, saying “all destruction in the Ukrainian capital’s residential areas […] are the direct result of the fall and self-destruction of anti-aircraft missiles launched by Ukrainian forces”.
The coming week will be “difficult” for the inhabitants of the Kyiv region, regional governor Oleksiï Kouleba warned, because “the destruction is significant” and “it is expected that […] temperatures drop to -10°C”.
These Russian attacks came four days after the humiliating withdrawal of Russian forces from part of the Kherson region, including the southern city of the same name, after more than eight months of occupation.