Two people are dead after a missile is thought to have landed in a Polish village on the border with Ukraine. The incident occurs as the Russian Federation unleashed a fresh barrage of rocket attacks on Ukraine.
“It’s clear this isn’t a massive Russian attack on a NATO member state. It concerns a rocket that came down during a wave of attacks on neighbouring Ukraine. It looks like something went seriously wrong. The question is what” VRT’s defence expert Jens Franssen says.
Russia and Ukraine use the same equipment complicating this issue. Franssen believes the missile could possibly be a poorly functioning Ukrainian ground-to-air rocket fired during the attack on Ukraine: “These are all things that need to be examined. Radar images will show what has happened “says Franssen.
VRT’s Russian affairs analyst Jan Balliauw reports that Poland has withdrawn a request to invoke article 4 of the NATO treaty that calls for an urgent NATO meeting when a member state feels threatened and requires support. “It looks like the stormy weather following the explosion is easing. This is clearly an accident, not an attack. The missile is reportedly part of Ukrainian air defences fired to down Russian rockets”.
The missile that landed in Poland is believed to be a Ukrainian short range anti-aircraft missile launched to down Russian rockets. “A first analysis based on photos of the missile wreckage suggests the S-300 air defence system was used. The missile employed by this system, the 5V55K, has a range of 75km” says Balliauw.
Chaired by NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg NATO ambassadors held an urgent meeting at NATO HQ in Brussels today.
Following the meeting Mr Stoltenberg said that preliminary analysis suggested the rocket was a Ukrainian missile fired by Ukrainian air defences used in order to respond to a Russian attack using cruise missiles.
Meanwhile the Polish president Andrzej Duda spoke of a tragic incident, highly probably the result of Ukrainian air defences.