The fall of rockets in Poland. What is known about it

On the evening of November 15 in Poland, as a result of the fall of two rockets in the village of Przewoduv, Lublin Voivodeship (borders on the Lviv region of Ukraine), two people were killed.

US President Joe Biden, at a briefing on the morning of November 16, said that preliminary information refutes speculation that shells could have been launched from the Russian side. “I don’t want to say this until we have a full investigation. But this is unlikely from the point of view of the trajectory, ”the White House press service quoted the American leader as saying.

In response to the question whether Poland intends to use fifth article of the NATO treaty (on the principle of collective defense), Biden noted that the organization still agrees that a meeting of permanent representatives should be held at the organization and discuss the situation. Later, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said that Poland had initiated the convening of a NATO council for consultations.

At the same time, as noted by the head of the Latvian Ministry of Defense Artis Pabriks (quote from Delfi), the rule on the application of the fifth article of the NATO treaty has not yet been discussed. Polish President Andrzej Duda held talks with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at night to clarify the grounds for invoking the fourth article of the alliance’s charter.

However, the Polish Foreign Ministry issued a statement that the missiles were allegedly “Russian-made”. As follows from the message, Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau summoned the Russian ambassador to the Foreign Ministry and demanded immediate detailed explanations.

In connection with the incident, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba spoke in favor of providing Ukraine with modern aircraft, such as the F-15 and F-16, and air defense systems, held talks with US State Department head Anthony Blinken and Polish Foreign Minister Rau in connection with the fall of missiles.

Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto announced the possibility of closing the airspace of Ukraine after the fall of missiles in Poland. According to him, this issue will be considered as one of the options for responding to the incident.

The leaders of the G7 countries and NATO at the G20 summit in Indonesia offered Poland their assistance in investigating and determining “next steps”. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, following his participation in the G20 summit, told reporters that Ankara respects Russia’s position and believes that it is not involved in the incident in Poland.

Later, according to a Reuters source in NATO, Biden told his partners in the alliance at the G20 summit that the fall of the missile in Poland was provoked by the work of Ukrainian air defense.

Press Secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov said that this situation confirmed that one should not rush to make assessments “at such crucial moments”. According to Peskov, there was no reason to escalate the situation, since the Poles had information about the fragments of the C-300 missile, which is not related to Russian weapons.

“The statements of the Polish media and officials about the alleged fall of “Russian” missiles in the area of ​​​​the settlement of Przewoduv is a deliberate provocation in order to escalate the situation. No strikes were made on targets near the Ukrainian-Polish state border by Russian means of destruction, ”the Russian Defense Ministry stressed the night before.