Click here for a summary of Tuesday’s events as they unfolded. For all Wednesday’s reaction and latest updates follow our live blog below.
The key points:
- NATO envoys in emergency session; secretary-general says ‘all facts’ need to be established
- Several reports from NATO meeting point to belief that missile blast caused by Ukrainian air defence
- US president said earlier missile may not have come from Russia
- Russian news report says images of missile fragment identified by experts as Ukrainian S-300
- Fears that Russia-Ukraine conflict could widen as NATO members are committed to collective defence
- Missile struck village of Przewodów, killing two civilians; European leaders express solidarity with Poland
- Explosion came as Russia pounded cities across Ukraine with missiles; Zelenskyy condemns ‘very significant escalation’
- Poland’s president calls for calm; says missile ‘most likely Russian-made’, but no concrete evidence of who fired it
- Moscow rejects reports of stray Russian missiles as ‘deliberate provocation’
Polish blast ’caused by Ukrainian air defence’ — Belgian defence minister
The explosion that killed two people in eastern Poland is believed to be “the result of Ukrainian air defence systems, used to counter Russian missiles,” Belgian Defence Minister Ludivine Dedonder said on Wednesday.
“Investigations are continuing, but at present there is no indication that it was a deliberate attack,” the minister added in a statement. Ukraine has accused Russia of hitting Polish territory with a missile strike.
US President Joe Biden also told G7 and NATO partners that a missile blast in eastern Poland was caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile, a NATO source told Reuters on Wednesday.
NATO ambassadors were scheduled to hold an emergency meeting at 1000 CET to respond to the explosion at a grain dryer near the Ukrainian border, which occurred while Russia was firing scores of missiles at cities across Ukraine.
Russian strikes ‘no closer than 35 km from Polish border’ — RIA
Russia’s defence ministry said on Wednesday that its strikes on Ukraine on Tuesday were no closer than 35 kilometres from the Polish border, the RIA state news agency reported.
It quoted the Russian defence ministry as saying that experts had identified rocket fragments in images from the explosion site in Poland as elements of the Ukrainian S-300 air defence system.
Poland’s President Duda said earlier that Poland had no concrete evidence showing who fired a missile that struck a Polish grain facility some six kilometres inside the border with Ukraine and killed two people.
A NATO source said US President Joe Biden had informed G7 and NATO partners that the blast in Poland had been caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile.
Poland missile strike ‘a message from Russia to G20’ — Zelenskyy
The missile strike in Poland “is nothing more than a message from Russia to the G20 summit,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the group’s leaders in Bali on Wednesday via video link.
There is “a terrorist state among you, against which we must defend ourselves,” he warned, according to the text seen by AFP of the speech delivered at the last session of the summit.
The Ukrainian leader, who wore his usual khaki T-shirt, addressed the “G19”, meaning the leaders of the major economies excluding Russia, which Kyiv has demanded be excluded from the group.
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, representing Russia, was there when the Ukrainian leader spoke, a source in the room told AFP.
Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin was the big absentee at the summit. He was replaced by his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, for the opening of the summit, but Lavrov left Bali on Tuesday evening after the first day.
A senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday that Russia was to blame for any “incidents with missiles” after waging war on his country.
Mykhailo Podolyak made his comments in a written statement after US President Joe Biden said a missile that killed two people in Poland was probably not fired from Russia.
“In my opinion, it is necessary to adhere to only one logic. The war was started and is being waged by Russia. Russia massively attacks Ukraine with cruise missiles. Russia has turned the eastern part of the European continent into an unpredictable battlefield,” Podolyak said.
Avoid ‘hasty conclusions’ over missile blast, says Scholz
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday warned against any “hasty conclusions” after the deadly fall of a missile in Poland that Warsaw said was probably Russian-made.
Speaking at a press briefing at the G20 summit in Indonesia, Scholz said “in such a serious case, we must be careful not to jump to any conclusions about the course of events before a careful investigation”, which is still underway.
“Naturally, we have exchanged current information from our (respective) security services to combine our investigative possibilities,” he said after a meeting with NATO countries attending the G20.
Scholz called it a positive sign that the United States had offered to assist Poland with the probe — and highlighted Russia’s responsibility.
“All this would not have happened without the Russian war against Ukraine and the missiles that were launched at Ukrainian infrastructure,” Scholz said. “There are many people in the world who… condemn this war,” he added.
He stressed that Vladimir Putin’s isolation was even stronger following the G20 conclusions: “I am sure that the result of this summit is that the Russian president is almost alone in the world with his policy,” he said.
What we know — and don’t know — about the missile blast in Poland
Key questions remain around the circumstances of Tuesday’s explosion in a village near the Ukrainian border — none more so than who fired it and whether it was deliberate.
Here we explore the issues:
What do we know about the Polish missile blast near Ukraine’s border?
Tuesday’s explosion that killed two people in the village of Przewodów has heightened fears that Russia’s war in Ukraine could spread and drag in NATO.
Russian missiles ‘hit circuits bordering Poland’ — Ukraine PM
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has spoken with his Ukrainian counterpart Denys Shmyhal, a Polish government spokesman said on Wednesday.
Ukraine’s prime minister described how “Russia carried out a massive missile attack on Ukrainian territory yesterday,” Piotr Müller of the Polish prime minister’s office said, using “about 80 rockets”.
“Many of them hit the circuits bordering Poland,” Müller added on Twitter, again quoting Shmyhal.
NATO envoys hold emergency meeting on Poland blast
NATO ambassadors will hold an emergency meeting at 1000 CET on Wednesday to discuss a missile strike in eastern Poland close to the Ukrainian border that killed two people on Tuesday, two NATO officials and a European diplomat said.
The Brussels gathering will be chaired by Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who will hold a news conference around 1230 CET, NATO said, amid concerns that the incident could be a trigger for the Ukraine war to spill into neighbouring countries.
“The reaction of our allies, their unequivocal support and willingness to stand by us, shows that we are a much safer country than if we were not in NATO,” Poland’s deputy foreign minister Pawel Jablonski told private radio station RMF FM on Wednesday.
“As a country bordering Ukraine, we may be exposed to various types of incidents, including accidental ones,” he added.
Many allies called for thorough investigations on the rocket’s source. US President Joe Biden said it was probably not fired from Russia, while Moscow said it had nothing to do with the blast.
But if it were to be determined that Moscow was to blame for the blast, it could trigger NATO’s principle of collective defence known as Article 5, in which an attack on one of the Western alliance’s members is deemed an attack on all, starting deliberations on a potential military response.
In the meantime, Poland will likely invoke NATO’s Article 4, Polish officials said in the early hours of Wednesday. Article 4 is a call for consultations among the allies in the face of a security threat, allowing for more time to determine what steps to take.
Police blockade in village where missile fell
In Przewodow, the Polish village near the Ukrainian border where the missile fell, police have blocked access to the landing point and are forming a blockade around the area, AFP reported. Police car sirens sounded under a grey and rainy sky on Wednesday.
The missile fell in the early afternoon on Tuesday and killed two Polish civilians, authorities said. A resident who declined to be identified said the two victims were men who were near the weighing area of a grain facility, Reuters reported.
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda said the missile was “most likely Russian-made” but there was no concrete evidence of who fired it. The blast came as Russia pounded targets across Ukraine with missiles, including in the west near the Polish border.
Poland is a member of NATO and some 10,000 US troops are in the country.
On Tuesday night, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called on “all Poles to remain calm in the face of this tragedy”.
Europe’s leaders express solidarity with Poland
There’s been unanimous condemnation from Western leaders, not least in Europe, after a missile, most likely Russian-made according to Warsaw, hit Polish territory and killed two people.
“Poland can count on France’s support and our readiness to assist in ongoing investigations,” President Macron of France tweeted after meeting Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Tuesday night.
Germany said it stood “closely alongside” its Polish NATO partner.
Finland — in the front line as Russia’s neighbour and a non-NATO member — said immediately after the explosions that it was “in contact with the Finnish embassy in Warsaw and other foreign ministers. We are waiting for more detailed information from Poland and our partners”.
In Eastern Europe, reactions, some of them more virulent, came in the wake of the explosions, before it was confirmed where the missile came from, or where it was made.
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda described the news from Poland as “concerning”. “Every inch of NATO territory must be defended,” he tweeted.
Slovakian Prime Minister Eduard Heger also expressed support. This was followed by Latvia and Estonia, both of whom said they stood by Poland.
In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s spokesman said that a defence council had been convened in the evening. Defence Minister Kristof Szalay-Bobrovniczky said afterwards that the situation was “uncertain” and “we don’t know exactly what happened”.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had spoken with Polish President Andrzej Duda. “Expressed condolences over the death of Polish citizens from Russian missile terror,” he tweeted. “We exchanged available information and are clarifying all the facts. Ukraine, Poland, all of Europe and the world must be fully protected from terrorist Russia.”
An emergency NATO meeting was due to be held on Wednesday. Another meeting was held on Wednesday morning in Bali between the leaders of the G7 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States), the White House announced.