The responses of Warsaw and Kiev to a missile incident in Poland were “irresponsible,” a senior diplomat says
Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia. © Spencer Platt / Getty Images / AFP
The reactions of Poland and Ukraine to a deadly blast on the border between the two states can only be seen as an attempt to trigger a direct clash between Russia and NATO, Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, said on Wednesday.
Speaking at a session of the UN Security Council, the Russian envoy blasted what he called “irresponsible statements made by the leaders” of Poland and Ukraine over the missile strike.
He noted that it did not take long for Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to blame the explosion in a Polish village on Moscow and to call for NATO to retaliate.
“I underscore that such claims are made by the person who cannot but be well aware that it had been Ukrainian air defense missiles that hit the territory of Poland,” Nebenzia stated. According to the diplomat, this was a “conscious attempt to drag NATO, which is waging ‘a war by proxy’ on Russia in Ukraine, into a direct confrontation with our country.”
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He added that the response of the Polish government to the incident was not much better, as they “stated unapologetically from the very start that they had suffered an attack by Russia.”
Had it not been for evidence in the form of photos from the scene of the blast, “all facts would have been concealed from the public, and Russia would have been proclaimed the guilty side,” the diplomat said.
On Tuesday, two civilians were killed in a blast in the Polish village of Przewodow near the Ukrainian border. The Polish Foreign Ministry initially claimed that a “Russian-made missile” was behind the incident. Later, however, Polish President Andrzej Duda indicated that the projectile was probably a Ukrainian air defense missile.
The Russian Defense Ministry denied any involvement, saying its military experts had analyzed the photos from the scene and identified parts of the projectile “as elements of a missile from the S-300 air defense system used by the Air Force of Ukraine.”
While Western officials admitted that the missile was Ukraine’s, they claimed that ultimate responsibility rests with Russia, as the incident only took place due to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine.
