The Kremlin’s top spokesman offered rare words of praise for the United States and leftist President Joe Biden in particular on Wednesday, expressing appreciation for a “restrained and … professional” response to a missile landing in Poland on Tuesday night and killing two people.
Explosions in Przewodów, a Polish town near the border with Ukraine, erupted on Tuesday night and were later confirmed to be the result of two missiles of unknown origin making contact with the town. Polish authorities confirmed that the missiles killed two people and summoned the Russian ambassador, as early reports indicated that missiles may have been a Russian attack.
Polish officials later revealed, however, that they had found no evidence that Russia had intentionally bombed their country, a NATO member, and instead evidence suggested that Ukraine’s air defense missiles were to blame.
“Ukraine’s defense was launching their missiles in various directions and it is highly probable that one of these missiles, unfortunately, fell on Polish territory,” Polish President Andrzej Duda later clarified. “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest that it was an intentional attack on Poland.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had rapidly accused Russia on Tuesday night of attacking Poland, urging the European community to launch a counter-attack. The Biden White House initially urged caution and later suggested that Polish sources did not believe Russia intentionally attacked the country.
“It is unlikely in the lines of the trajectory that it was fired from Russia, but we’ll see,” Biden told reporters.
State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters on Tuesday that Washington was “working with the Polish government and our allies and partners and gather information and assess exactly what happen,” refusing to identify a responsible party.
“The United States is certainly not trying to escalate or incite the situation at all,” Patel emphasized.
Dmitry Peskov, Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s top spokesman, expressed gratitude to Biden on Thursday for his discretion.
“It makes sense to pay attention to the restrained and (…) professional reaction of the American side, the American president,” Peskov said, according to the Turkish outlet Anadolu Agency. Peskov compared Biden to European leaders, who he called “hysterical” and “Russophobic.”
Russian media rapidly began blaming Ukraine for the missile incident in Poland. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described the incident as an intentional “provocation” by the Ukrainian government and, as Ukraine did in blaming Russia, immediately demanded a global response.
“Zelensky is sitting in a bunker and does not understand why even the most toxic Russophobes disavowed his version of a ‘Russian missile in Poland,’” Zakharova proclaimed. “He cannot comprehend that he was placed as the ringleader of a gang of bandits in Ukraine to do the dirty work, and not to dictate to his curators what to do.”
The Polish government later issued statements suggesting that Ukrainian air defense attempting to prevent Russian attacks may have gone astray and resulted in an inadvertent strike in Poland.
“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,” Duda told reporters on Wednesday. “There are many indications that it was an air defense missile, which unfortunately fell on Polish territory.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg similarly told reporters on Wednesday that NATO had “no indication that this was the result of a deliberate attack.” Stoltenberg insisted that, information linking the missile to the Ukrainian military aside, “this is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears ultimate responsibility,” presumably for invading Ukraine in the first place.
Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, colonizing its Crimea region and fighting a proxy war through pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region. The war went on for eight years with minimal objection from the West before this February, when Putin announced a “special operation” to “de-Nazify” Ukraine, claiming Zelensky’s government was dominated by “Nazis” and needed to be overthrown.
Zelensky responded by noting his Jewish heritage, the fact that Ukrainians elected him in a free and fair election, and objecting to a military invasion of his country.
The war has since escalated to a full-scale Russian attack on much of Ukraine’s soil. Putin announced the annexation of the Donbass regions, Donetsk and Luhansk, in September, along with the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Putin insisted in a ceremony to welcome the Ukrainian territories to the Russian Federation that annexation was necessary to prevent the “Satanic” West from imposing transgender ideology on Russian children.
While NATO, Poland, and the United States urged caution following the missile bombing on Tuesday, Zelensky rapidly blamed Russia for the attack and urged Europe to organize a military escalation.
“RF [Russian Federation] kills anywhere it can reach. Today it reached [Poland],” Zelensky wrote on Twitter. “RF terror must be stopped. Solidarity is our strength!”
“All of Europe and the world must be fully protected from terrorist Russia,” he added later in an English-language update following a conversation with Duda.
The government news site Ukrinform has since reported both Duda’s and Stoltenberg’s announcements that “Tuesday’s explosion in Poland was likely caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile.”
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