‘Unfortunate accident’

GBNEWS24DESK//

Poland yesterday said a deadly blast that killed two people in a village near the border with Ukraine was likely caused by a stray Ukrainian air defence missile launched against a Russian barrage.

Polish President Andrzej Duda played down international fears of a further escalation in the war in Ukraine saying there was “no indication that this was an intentional attack on Poland”.

Duda said it was “very likely” the Soviet-era missile was launched by Ukraine in what he called an “unfortunate accident” but he said the blame lay with Russia because of its attacks on Ukraine.

After emergency talks of the Nato military alliance, its chief Jens Stoltenberg also said there was “no indication of a deliberate attack” on Poland.

The blast occurred in the village of Przewodow in eastern Poland at 1440 GMT on Tuesday, killing two farm workers.

Nato member Poland put its military on heightened alert and summoned Russia’s ambassador late Tuesday but had cautioned against reaching any hasty conclusions as to the origin of the Soviet-era missile.

Western powers voiced solidarity with Poland in intensive rounds of diplomacy, including on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Indonesia’s Bali.

Nato ambassadors held emergency talks in Brussels, while the Kremlin said it had “nothing to do with” the missile blast.

“Photographs of the wreckage… were unequivocally identified by Russian military experts as fragments of a guided anti-aircraft missile of a Ukrainian S-300 air defence system,” the Russian defence ministry said in a statement.

It added that its own strikes “were carried out on targets only on the territory of Ukraine and at a distance of no closer than 35 kilometres from the Ukrainian-Polish border.”

The Kremlin praised Washington’s “measured” response after US President Joe Biden said it was “unlikely” that it had come from Russia.

Poland is protected by Nato’s commitment to collective defence — enshrined in Article 5 of its founding treaty — but the alliance’s response will likely be heavily influenced by whether the incident was accidental or intentional.