A rocket hit killed two people in Poland on Tuesday. The West assumes that it was one or more Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles. The Ukrainian President, however, sees things differently. “I think it was a Russian missile, based on the confidence I have in the military reports,” Zelensky said on Wednesday. That causes criticism.
An unnamed diplomat from a NATO country raged in the Financial Times about the president’s statement. “Now it’s getting ridiculous. The Ukrainians are destroying our trust in them. No one blames them, and now they lie publicly. It’s more destructive than the rocket,” the newspaper quoted the diplomat as saying.
And the US President also objected. “That’s not the evidence,” Joe Biden said Thursday when asked about his Ukrainian counterpart’s claim. Hungary criticized the Ukrainian head of state’s statements as irresponsible. “In such a situation, world leaders speak responsibly,” said Gergely Gulyas, chief of staff to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “The President of Ukraine was wrong when he immediately blamed the Russians. That is a bad example.”
Kyiv has not yet seen any evidence that it was a Ukrainian missile, Zelensky said and called for a joint investigation. In his daily video message, he later called on Ukraine’s allies to provide “all the data” about the incident. “We want to clarify all the details, all the facts. Therefore, we need (…) access to all the data held by our partners, as well as to the location of the explosion,” said Zelenskyy.
Regardless of whose arsenal the missile came from, many international observers agree that Russia, with its war of aggression against Ukraine, is ultimately responsible for the impact in Poland. A rocket hit the Polish border area with Ukraine on Tuesday and killed two people.
It is a unique event in the Ukraine war: Two Russian missiles apparently landed in a village in NATO country Poland on Tuesday, killing two people. FOCUS online Russia expert Herfried Münkler explains what reactions from the West can now be expected.
Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy does not believe that Ukraine is responsible for the rocket hit in Poland. Lavrov’s spokeswoman makes fun of it. Ukraine is pushing for the establishment of a no-fly zone. All current voices and developments on the Ukraine war can be found in our ticker.
Two people died in an explosion in the Polish village of Przewodów near the Ukrainian border. After initial suspicions that it was a Russian missile, there are now clear indications of a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile.