Missile probably not fired from Russia — Biden
A missile that killed two people in Poland was probably not fired from Russia, U.S. President Joe Biden said on Wednesday after holding talks at the G20 summit in Indonesia with leaders of Western allies, amid concerns the Ukraine conflict could spill into neighbouring countries.
Asked whether it was too early to say if the missile was fired from Russia, Biden said: “There is preliminary information that contests that. I don’t want to say that until we completely investigate it, but it is unlikely in the lines of the trajectory that it was fired from Russia but we’ll see.”
The United States and NATO countries would fully investigate before acting, Biden said.
The explosion on Tuesday at a grain facility near the Ukrainian border came as Russia unleashed a wave of missiles targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure, attacks that Kyiv said were the heaviest in nearly nine months of war.
The Polish foreign ministry said the rocket fell on Przewodow, a village about 6 km (4 miles) from the border with Ukraine.
According to U.S. officials, initial findings suggested that the missile that hit Poland was fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian missile, the Associated Press said.
Earlier, Polish President Andrzej Duda had told reporters it was “most likely a Russian-made missile”, but there was no concrete evidence of who fired it, and the incident was a one-off.
Russia’s defence ministry denied that any Russian missiles hit Polish territory, describing such reports as “a deliberate provocation aimed at escalating the situation”. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said he had no information on an explosion in Poland.
Any Russian strike on Poland could risk widening the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are committed to collective defence under its Article 5.
NATO ambassadors are expected to meet later on Wednesday.
