Russia has accused Ukraine and “Poland’s Russophobic government” of trying to provoke a “direct clash between Russia and NATO” over what was likely an accidental Ukrainian missile strike on Polish territory.
Russia’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary at the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, complained at a UN Security Council meeting of “the attempts of Ukraine and Poland to provoke a direct clash between Russia and NATO” after two Poles were killed by a blast in the Polish border town of Przewodów.
“The absolutely irresponsible statements made by the leadership of these two countries cannot be perceived in any other way,” he insisted in comments quoted by Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency.
“I am highlighting this for the colleagues: These statements came from a person that couldn’t fail to have the information that it was Ukrainian missiles fired by an air defence system that flew over to Poland,” he said in reference to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly declaring that Poland had been a victim of “Russian missile terror” in the immediate aftermath of the incident.
“That means it wasn’t just deliberate disinformation but a conscious attempt to prompt NATO, which is waging a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, to get involved in a direct clash with our country,” the envoy alleged.
Nebenzya went on to claim that “Poland’s Russophobic government wasn’t much different as they said from the start with full confidence that they came under a Russian attack,” complaining that the Polish foreign ministry “summoned the Russian ambassador in the dead of the night and issued him a resolute protest” — although in fact the Poles were fairly reserved in apportioning blame for the strike.
Warsaw did say that the munition that struck their territory appeared to be Russian-made — which could easily be true regardless of who fired it, given Russia and Ukraine both possess stocks of once-shared Soviet-era weaponry — but also asked the press to refrain from pushing unverified information, at a time when the Associated Press was already reporting that a U.S. defence official had briefed them that Russia was responsible.
Indeed, Polish president Andrzej Duda has stressed that there “is no indication that this was an intentional attack on Poland.”
“Most likely, it was a Russian-made S-300 rocket. We have not proof at the moment that it was a missile fired by the Russian side,” he explained, adding that there “are many indications that it was [a Ukrainian] air defence missile, which unfortunately fell on Polish territory” — more or less in line with the emerging Western consensus on what happened, led by U.S. President Joe Biden.
On November 15th, Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba claimed in a post still live on social media as of the time of publication that this version of events was a Russian “conspiracy theory”.
President Zelensky reiterated yesterday that he has “no doubts” about a report he received from the Ukrainian military “that it wasn’t our missile or our missile strike,” but also appeared to lay the groundwork for a potential climbdown.
“Let’s say openly, if, God forbid, some remnant [of a Ukrainian missile] killed a person, these people, then we need to apologize, but first there needs to be a probe, access — we want to get the data you have,” he said in comments quoted by Global News.
In any case, the NATO position is that “Russia bears ultimate responsibility” for what happened, with alliance secretary general Jens Stoltenberg arguing the Ukrainians would not have fired the missile if they had not been attempting to defend themselves from a Russian bombardment.