After an emergency meeting with G7and NATO leaders, US president Joe Biden has declared that the missile that killed two people in Poland on Tuesday was probably not fired from Russia.
Initial reports suggested the missile may have been accidentally fired into Polish territory by Russia, but on Wednesday Biden said it was unlikely to have been fired from Russia based on its trajectory.
The Polish foreign ministry said the rocket exploded Tuesday at a grain facility in Przewodow, a village about 4 miles from the border with Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky who was quick to allege the explosions were caused by “Russian missile terror” decried the incident as “a very significant escalation”
U.S. officials are now briefing the Associated Press that the deadly explosions in Poland blamed on Moscow by Zelensky were probably caused by missiles fired by Ukrainian forces
Breitbart reports: However, three U.S. officials who “spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly” have now briefed the Associated Press that preliminary investigations suggest it was actually Ukraine that struck Poland, likely as a result of an anti-aircraft missile or missiles fired at an incoming Russian bombardment going off course.
Speaking to reporters at the G20 summit in Indonesia, U.S. President Joe Biden appeared to echo these sentiments when asked about the missiles being fired by Russia, saying there is “preliminary information that contests that.”
“It is unlikely in the lines of the trajectory that it was fired from Russia, but we’ll see,” he said, reserving final judgment until investigations are complete.
Initially, an AP source described as a “senior U.S. intelligence official” had claimed that “Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland” but, at least as of the time of publication, this narrative appears to have been retracted.
Poland, for its part, has said that the munitions which struck their territory were “most probably” made in Russia — although Russia and Ukraine share a common stock of older missiles dating from the Soviet era — and has summoned the Russian ambassador “and demanded immediate detailed explanations,” according to an official statement.
“We are acting with calm,” said the country’s national conservative president, Andrzej Duda. “This is a difficult situation.”
Russia’s official line is that attempts to blame them for the blasts in Poland are a “deliberate provocation to escalate the situation,” and that “Russian firepower has launched no strikes at the area between [the] Ukrainian–Polish border.”
