Nato says ‘no indication’ missile strike on Poland was ‘deliberate attack’

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Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg has said there is “no indication” that a missile that struck Poland was a “deliberate attack” and suggested it was fired by Ukraine while defending itself against a barrage of Russian weapons.

Stoltenberg told a press conference in Brussels that the western military alliance also had “no indication that Russia is preparing offensive military actions against Nato”.

Moscow denied responsibility for the strike in the village of Przewodów near the Ukrainian border on Tuesday afternoon, which came during Russia’s biggest missile attack on Ukraine in weeks. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and some western nations initially blamed Russia for launching the missile, which Warsaw said was a strike by a “Russian-made missile”.

Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary-general, said: “Our preliminary analysis suggests that the incident was likely caused by Ukrainian air defence missile fired to defend Ukrainian territory against Russian cruise missile attacks.”

However, he added: “This is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears responsibility for what happened in Poland yesterday because this is a direct result of the ongoing war, and the wave of attacks from Russia against Ukraine yesterday.

“Ukraine has the right to shoot down those missiles that are targeting Ukrainian cities and critical Ukrainian infrastructure.”

Andrzej Duda, Polish president, told a press conference in Poland on Wednesday that his government had reached the same conclusion as Nato.

He said investigators believed that “most likely” it had been a Russian-made missile produced in the 1970s, the S300. “We have no evidence that it was launched by Russia,” he added.

Photographs posted on social media from where the missile landed showed a damaged farm vehicle lying on its side next to a large crater. Local media reported the casualties were farm workers.

The announcements on Wednesday confirm a statement by US president Joe Biden after a hastily-convened member of G7 leaders on the sidelines of the G20 summit. Biden told reporters there was “preliminary information that contests” the missile was fired from Russia.

Zelenskyy’s national security chief Oleksiy Danilov said on Wednesday that Ukraine was “advocating a further, as detailed as possible study of this incident together with our partners”. 

“We are ready to hand over to our partners the evidence of the Russian trail that we have,” he said in a statement. “We also expect information from our partners, on the basis of which a final conclusion was made that it is a Ukrainian air defence missile. In addition, Ukraine requests immediate access to the site of the explosion.”

Dmitry Peskov, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, told reporters on Wednesday that the initial claims of Russian responsibility from Kyiv and some western allies were “yet another hysterical, rabidly Russophobic reaction that was not based on any real information”. 

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Russia insisted it did not fire on any targets close to the Polish border and said that any damage to civilians was Kyiv’s fault.

The defence ministry said it had not even fired on Kyiv during the day’s barrage, and said the incident in Poland was a “deliberate provocation with the goal of escalating the situation”.

Peskov praised Biden’s reaction, however, which he said was “restrained and more professional” than “the absolutely hysterical reaction of Poland and a number of other countries”.

Polish media reported that a second missile explosion had been heard on Tuesday afternoon on the Polish side of the border, but neither Poland’s president nor its prime minister mentioned a second hit on Wednesday during their news conference.