“I have no doubt that this missile was not ours,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on television Wednesday evening.
“I believe it was a Russian missile, in accordance with the report of the Ukrainian military”, he added while NATO officials previously estimated that it was probably a missile from the Ukrainian system. anti-aircraft defense.
He also claimed to have received no evidence from the West of the hypothesis of a Ukrainian projectile fired to shoot down Russian cruise missiles, launched against Ukrainian territory during a massive attack.
“Do we have the right to receive evidence from our partners behind closed doors? We have not received anything,” Mr. Zelensky said, stressing that kyiv wanted to be part of an international investigation group on this incident.
Budapest said on Wednesday that President Zelensky was setting “a bad example”. “In such a situation, world leaders speak responsibly,” Gergely Gulyas, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff, told reporters.
The fall of the missile on the Polish village has raised fears that NATO will be drawn into the conflict and a major escalation in the war in Ukraine, as Poland is protected by an Atlantic Alliance collective defense commitment.
Russia denied having fired the missile, Warsaw itself deeming it “highly probable” that it was a Ukrainian anti-aircraft projectile, citing “an unfortunate accident”.
The missile killed two men in Przewodow by hitting an agricultural building, leaving Poland in shock and its army on heightened alert.
The White House has “seen nothing that contradicts” the hypothesis, put forward by Warsaw, according to which the missile fell in Poland “in all probability” came from Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense, a spokeswoman for the Security Council said on Wednesday. National, Adrienne Watson.
“That being said, whatever the final conclusions, it is clear that Russia is ultimately responsible for this tragic incident” because of its strikes against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, she said in a statement. statement, adding: “Ukraine had, and has, the right to defend itself
“The incident was probably caused by a missile from the Ukrainian air defense system fired to defend Ukrainian territory against Russian cruise missiles,” NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said earlier after a meeting of crisis in Brussels.
– No “intentional” attack –
“There is no indication that this was an intentional attack on Poland,” said Polish President Andrzej Duda.
Ukraine demanded “immediate access” to the missile’s landing point in Poland.
But, from Bali (Indonesia) where the G20 met at the summit, US President Joe Biden also deemed it “improbable” that the missile was fired by Russia.
Moscow hailed Washington’s “restraint”.
Poland had urgently convened its National Security Council on Tuesday and summoned the Russian ambassador for “immediate detailed explanations”.
For its part, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday evening that it had informed the Polish ambassador in Moscow, Krzysztof Krajewski, “the unacceptable nature of the strengthening in Poland of an anti-Russian hysteria” after the incident.
“While it was dark and at that time there was no reliable information about what had just happened, Warsaw found it necessary to summon the Russian ambassador and turn this into a political show” , denounced Russian diplomacy, while calling on Poland not to take part in “dirty provocations”.
Mao Ning, spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, previously called on “all parties concerned” to “remain calm and exercise restraint in order to avoid an escalation”.
– “war crime” –
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 and still controls parts of it, despite a string of battlefield defeats in recent months.
Poland, which has a 530 km border with Ukraine, is a regional leader in terms of military and humanitarian assistance to its eastern neighbor. It hosts on its territory some 10,000 American soldiers.
The missile fell as Russia carried out massive strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure on Tuesday, which left millions of homes without power. Russian missiles hit cities across the country, including Lviv (west), near the Polish border.
The US Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley, ruled on Wednesday that these Russian missile strikes constituted a “war crime”.
The highest-ranking United States official considered that Russia had failed on all fronts in its war against Ukraine, and was therefore waging a “campaign of terror” there.
These strikes, which killed at least one person in kyiv, led to widespread power cuts in Ukraine and as far as neighboring Moldova.
Moscow on Wednesday denied targeting the capital, saying “all destruction in the Ukrainian capital’s living quarters (…) is a direct result of the downing and self-destruction of anti-aircraft missiles launched by Ukrainian forces “.
The coming week will be “difficult” for the inhabitants of the kyiv region, warned regional governor Oleksiï Kouleba, because “the destruction is important” and “it is expected that (…) temperatures will drop to ‘at -10°C’.
These Russian attacks came four days after the humiliating withdrawal of Russian forces from part of the Kherson region, including the southern city of the same name, after more than eight months of occupation.
General Mark Milley, however, said on Wednesday it was unlikely, at least in the short term, that Ukraine could militarily dislodge Russia from all the territories it occupies in the country, including Crimea.
