New Delhi: Polish President Andrzej Duda said that the missile blast that killed two persons near the Ukrainian border appears to be an "unfortunate accident” and not an "intentional attack," news agency AP reported. He said that the missile that struck a Polish border village was "very likely" from Ukraine's air defence.
"There is no indication that this was an intentional attack on Poland. Most likely, it was a Russian-made S-300 rocket. We have no proof at the moment that it was a missile fired by the Russian side," he tweeted on Wednesday.
Notably, earlier, US President Joe Biden also said that it was “unlikely” that Russia fired the missile and added “I’m going to make sure we find out exactly what happened.”
It is to be noted that the missile hitting eastern Poland marked the first time that a NATO country had been directly hit during the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. However, according to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, there is no indication that the Poland blast was a deliberate attack by Russia.
Polish Prime Minister Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that Warsaw might not need to activate Article 4 of the alliance's treaty that calls for consultations when a country considers its security under threat.
Notably, the missile came down near Poland’s border with Ukraine on Tuesday. Three US officials, on condition of anonymity said preliminary assessments suggested that the missile was fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian one.
According to Kyiv, it shot down most of the incoming Russian missiles with its own air defence missiles.
In a tweet posted hours after the incident, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy blamed it on "Russian missile terror". Reacting to this, Kremlin said that some countries had made "baseless statements" about the incident.
“We have witnessed another hysterical, frenzied, Russophobic reaction that was not based on any real data,” news agency AP quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.