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Poland and NATO say missile landing was not a Russian attack

“There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest that it was a deliberate attack on Poland.”

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PRZEWODOW, POLAND — A representative of NATO member Poland and its military alliance said Wednesday that there were “no indications” that the missile that struck Polish farmland, killing two people, was a deliberate attack, citing a neighboring country. Ukrainian air defenses are likely to do, he said. Launched Soviet-era projectiles to fend off Russian attacks that ravaged power grids.

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“Ukrainian defenses have fired missiles in different directions and unfortunately it is very likely that one of these missiles fell on Polish territory,” said Polish President Andrzej Duda. “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest it was a deliberate attack on Poland.”

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At a meeting of the 30-nation military alliance in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg agreed with Poland’s preliminary findings, saying, “There is no indication that this was the result of a deliberate attack. ‘ said.

Initial assessments of Tuesday’s deadly missile landing appeared to undermine the chances of the incident sparking another major escalation in the nearly nine-month-long Russian invasion of Ukraine. Targeting Poland could have risked drawing NATO into the conflict.

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Still, Stoltenberg and others condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in general, but without specific responsibility.

“This is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia is ultimately to blame,” Stoltenberg said.

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Ahead of the Polish and NATO assessments, U.S. President Joe Biden said it was “unlikely” that Russia launched a missile, but added that “we will try to find out exactly what happened.” .

Three US officials said preliminary assessments suggested Ukrainian forces opened fire on Russian forces. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

That assessment and Biden’s comments at the G20 summit in Indonesia contradicted earlier information on Tuesday from a senior US intelligence official who told the Associated Press that a Russian missile had entered Poland.

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Ukraine, a former Soviet-bloc country, maintains stockpiles of Soviet and Russian-made weapons, including air defense missiles, and has seized even more Russian weapons while repelling invading Kremlin forces.

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Ukrainian air defenses worked hard against Tuesday’s Russian attacks on power generation and transmission facilities, including in Ukraine’s western region that borders Poland. The Ukrainian military said 77 of his more than 90 missiles fired were shot down, along with 11 drones.

The Kremlin on Wednesday condemned Poland and other countries’ initial reaction to the missile landing and hailed Biden’s “restrained, more professional response” in a rare praise for a US leader.

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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “We have witnessed elsewhere a hysterical and enthusiastic Russophobic reaction that is not based on real data. All experts realized that it could not be a missile associated with the Russian military,” he added.

Yet Ukraine came under nationwide Russian shelling on Tuesday from a barrage of cruise missiles and drone explosions, clouding the first picture of what exactly happened in Poland and why.

In Europe, NATO members Germany and the United Kingdom have called for a thorough investigation of the missile landings, along with criticism of Moscow.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: “Without Russia’s war against Ukraine, the missiles currently being intensively and massively fired at Ukrainian infrastructure, this would not have happened.”

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“This is the cruel and unforgiving reality of Putin’s war,” said British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called it a “very serious escalation”. China, on the other hand, is calling for calm and restraint.

Airstrikes in Ukraine have caused widespread damage, plunging parts of the country into darkness. Zelensky said about 10 million people were without power, but overnight he tweeted that 8 million people were reconnected and repair workers were working through the night. Previous Russian strikes had already destroyed an estimated 40% of the country’s energy infrastructure.

The missile landed in the Polish village of Przewodow, near the border with Ukraine.

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Russian artillery fire also affected neighboring Moldova. It reported a massive blackout after a strike in Ukraine cut power lines to the small country.

One person was killed in a residential building Tuesday’s attack in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. It followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by last week’s recapture of southern Kherson, one of its greatest military successes.

As battlefield losses mount, Russia is increasingly resorting to means of targeting the Ukrainian power grid, hoping to turn the approach of winter into a weapon by leaving people in the cold and darkness. There seems to be

— Vanessa Guerra and Monika Sislawska, AP journalists in Warsaw. Lone Cook in Brussels. John Lester in Kyiv, Ukraine. His Zeke Miller in Nusa Dua, Indonesia. Michael Balsamo and Lolita Bardot in Washington DC. Contributed by James LaPorta of Wilmington, NC.

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Poland and NATO say missile landing was not a Russian attack

Source link Poland and NATO say missile landing was not a Russian attack

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