NATO and Poland’s leaders said there is no indication that a missile that struck Polish territory late Tuesday was an intentional Russian attack as governments in the military alliance moved to defuse the incident.
“Our preliminary analysis suggests that the incident was likely caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile fired to defend Ukrainian territory against Russian cruise missile attacks,” Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, told reporters after a meeting in Brussels.
Polish President Andrzej Duda said his country is unlikely to invoke Article 4 of the NATO charter, which would trigger consultations on a military response.
The assessment matched that of US President Joe Biden, who told allies on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit in Indonesia that the explosion near the Ukrainian border was caused by Kyiv’s air defenses, according to two officials familiar with the matter. The American leader still said the strike was ultimately sparked by the Russian missile barrage on Ukraine.
The findings defuse what looked to be a significant escalation in the conflict, with US and European leaders grappling with a potential response if Russia’s nine-month invasion of Ukraine were to spill over to the 30-member military alliance. Ukraine was hit by the biggest barrage of missile attacks since the invasion began in February on Tuesday, knocking out power to a broad swathe of the country, including the capital Kyiv.
“Most likely, this was an unfortunate accident,” Duda told reporters in Warsaw on Wednesday. Still, “practically the entire territory of Ukraine was under bombardment, in particular the areas near the border.”
“That’s why the Russian side is definitely to blame for what happened yesterday,” he said.
The explosion killed two people at the Polish village of Przewodow, about 6 kilometers (4 miles) from the Ukrainian border. The incident sparked a flurry of diplomatic consultations from Warsaw to Bali overnight and an emergency meeting of NATO ambassadors in Brussels on Wednesday.
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