Yan St-Pierre: Security expert says Poland, Nato say missile strike wasn’t deliberate Russian attack, likely Ukraine air defence

Nato member Poland and the head of the military alliance both say a missile strike in Polish farmland that killed two people on Tuesday (yesterday NZ time) did not appear to be an intentional attack, and that air defences in neighbouring Ukraine likely launched the Soviet-era projectile against a Russian bombardment that savaged the Ukrainian power grid.

“Ukraine’s defence was launching their missiles in various directions and it is highly probable that one of these missiles unfortunately fell on Polish territory,” said Polish President Andrzej Duda.

“There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest that it was an intentional attack on Poland.”

Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, at a meeting of the 30-nation military alliance in Brussels, echoed the preliminary Polish findings, saying: “We have no indication that this was the result of a deliberate attack.”

The initial assessments of the deadly missile landing appeared to dial back the likelihood of the strike triggering another major escalation in the nearly nine-month-old Russian invasion of Ukraine. If Russia had deliberately targeted Poland, that could have risked drawing Nato into the conflict.

Still, Stoltenberg and others laid overall but not specific blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war.

“This is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears ultimate responsibility,” Stoltenberg said.

Before the Polish and Nato assessments, US President Joe Biden had said it was “unlikely” that Russia fired the missile but added: “I’m going to make sure we find out exactly what happened.”

Three US officials said preliminary assessments suggested it was fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian one.

That assessment and Biden’s comments at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia contradicted earlier information from a senior US intelligence official who told The Associated Press that Russian missiles crossed into Poland.

Ukraine, once part of the Soviet Union, fields Soviet- and Russian-made weaponry, including air-defence missiles, and has also seized many more Russian weapons while beating back the Kremlin’s invasion forces.

Ukrainian air defences worked furiously against the Russian assault on Tuesday on power generation and transmission facilities, including in Ukraine’s western region that borders Poland. Ukraine’s military said 77 of the more than 90 missiles fired were brought down, along with 11 drones.

Russia said it didn’t launch the missile that landed in Poland.

A Defence Ministry spokesman said no Russian strike on Tuesday was closer than 35km from the Ukraine-Poland border. The Kremlin denounced Poland’s and other countries’ initial response and, in rare praise for a US leader, hailed Biden’s “restrained, much more professional reaction”.

US President Joe Biden, left, and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak attend an emergency meeting of leaders at the G20 summit in Nusa Dua, Indonesia, after a missile landed in Poland near the Ukrainian border yesterday. Photo / AP

“We have witnessed another hysterical, frenzied, Russo-phobic reaction that was not based on any real data,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Still, Ukraine was under countrywide Russian bombardment on Tuesday by barrages of cruise missiles and exploding drones, which clouded the initial picture of what exactly happened in Poland and why.

The Polish president said the projectile was “most probably” a Russian-made S-300 missile dating from the Soviet era.

“It was a huge blast, the sound was terrifying,” said Ewa Byra, the primary school director in the eastern village of Przewodow, where the missile struck. She said she knew both men who