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Kabul: Russia’s defense ministry has denied allegations circulating that its missiles struck Poland on Tuesday, not long after a U.S. intelligence official said that Russian strikes killed two people in a possible escalation of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“No strikes on targets near the Ukrainian-Polish state border were made by Russian means of destruction,” the ministry said in a statement on Telegram, adding that the related “statements of the Polish media and officials” are “a deliberate provocation aimed at escalating the situation.”
The Russian ministry further emphasized that the wreckage reportedly discovered at the scene of the strike “has nothing to do with Russian weapons.”
Latest reports by the Associate Press, cited US officials as saying that the missile was fired by Ukrainian forces while aiming at “an incoming Russian missile.”
The missile landed on Tuesday outside the rural Polish village of Przewodow — nearly 6.4 kilometers west of the Ukrainian border, killing two people.
Meanwhile, world leaders gathering at the G20 summit in Indonesia are reportedly scrambling to diffuse further escalation of the Ukraine war following the missile strike.
US President Joe Biden said at a press briefing following an emergency meeting with other G7 and NATO leaders on the sidelines of the G20 summit in the resort city of Bali that preliminary information suggested that it was “unlikely” the missile was fired from within Russia, noting that he could not yet confirm what happened until investigations into the incident were complete.
If confirmed, the strikes in NATO member territory would bring about the possibility of invoking Article 5, a stipulation in the charter governing the alliance that specifies that any attack on any member country is effectively an attack against them all. Triggering Article 5, however, is not an automatic action.
