PRZEWODOW, Poland: US President Joe Biden and other Western backers of Ukraine threw their weight Wednesday behind an investigation into why and how a missile that Poland said was Russian-made came down in Polish farmland, killing two people, when Russia was savaging the Ukrainian power grid with missiles and exploding drones.
\nBiden said it was \u201cunlikely\u201d that Russia fired the missile but added, \u201cwe\u2019ll see,\u201d and vowed: \u201cI\u2019m going to make sure we find out exactly what happened.\u201d
\nPolish President Andrzej Duda went further, saying there are no signs that the blast was a deliberate attack.
\nThe missile came down Tuesday near Poland\u2019s border with Ukraine. Three US officials said preliminary assessments suggested it was fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian one. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren\u2019t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
\nThat assessment and Biden\u2019s comments at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia contradicted information earlier Tuesday from a senior US intelligence official who told The Associated Press that Russian missiles crossed into Poland.
\nThe Kremlin on Wednesday denounced Poland\u2019s and other countries\u2019 reaction to the missile incident as \u201chysterical\u201d and, in rare praise for a US leader, hailed the \u201crestrained and much more professional\u201d reaction of the US
\n\u201cWe have witnessed another hysterical, frenzied, Russophobic reaction that was not based on any real data,\u201d Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday. He added that \u201cimmediately, all experts realized that it could not have been a missile linked to the Russian armed forces,\u201d and pointed to a \u201crestrained, much more professional reaction\u201d of the US and its president, Joe Biden.
\nIn Brussels, NATO countries were coming together Wednesday for emergency talks. There was no immediate proof that Tuesday\u2019s blast was a deliberate, hostile attack on NATO member Poland that could trigger the alliance\u2019s provisions for a collective military response.
\nRussia denied any involvement. But Ukraine was under countrywide Russian bombardment Tuesday by barrages of cruise missiles and exploding drones, which clouded the picture of what exactly happened in Poland and why.
\nIn Europe, NATO members Germany and the UK were among those stressing the need for a full investigation. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned against jumping to conclusions \u201cin such a serious matter.\u201d
\nStill, Scholz and others also laid overall but not specific blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.
\n\u201cThis wouldn\u2019t have happened without the Russian war against Ukraine, without the missiles that are now being fired at Ukrainian infrastructure intensively and on a large scale,\u201d Scholz said.
\nUK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak echoed that assessment, saying: \u201cThis is the cruel and unrelenting reality of Putin\u2019s war.\u201d
\nUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called it \u201ca very significant escalation.\u201d On the other end of the spectrum, China was among those calling for calm and restraint.
\nThe Polish government said it was investigating and raising its level of military preparedness. On Twitter, Biden promised \u201cfull USsupport for and assistance with Poland\u2019s investigation.\u201d
\nA statement from the Polish Foreign Ministry identified the weapon as being made in Russia. Duda, however, was more cautious, saying that it was \u201cmost probably\u201d Russian-made but that its origins were still being verified.
\n\u201cWe are acting with calm,\u201d Duda said. \u201cThis is a difficult situation.\u201d
\nFormer Soviet-bloc country Ukraine maintains stocks of Soviet- and Russian-made weaponry, including air-defense missiles, and has also seized many more Russian weapons while beating back the Kremlin\u2019s invasion forces.
\nUkrainian air defenses worked furiously against the Russian assault Tuesday on power generation and transmission facilities, including in Ukraine\u2019s western region that borders Poland. Ukraine\u2019s military said 77 of the more than 90 missiles fired were brought down, along with 11 drones.
\nDamage from the aerial assault in Ukraine was extensive and swaths of the country were plunged into darkness. Zelensky said about 10 million people lost power but tweeted overnight that 8 million were subsequently reconnected, with repair crews laboring through the night. Previous Russian strikes had already destroyed an estimated 40 percent of the country\u2019s energy infrastructure.
\nNATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called the meeting in Brussels of the alliance\u2019s envoys. The UN Security Council also planned to meet Wednesday for a previously scheduled briefing on the situation in Ukraine.
\nPoland\u2019s statement didn\u2019t address whether the strike could have been a targeting error or if the missile could have been knocked off course by Ukrainian defenses.
\nPoland and NATO used language that suggested they weren\u2019t treating the missile blast as an intentional Russian attack, at least for now. A NATO statement called it a \u201ctragic incident.\u201d
\nIf Russia had deliberately targeted Poland, it would risk drawing NATO into the conflict.
\nPolish media reported that the strike took place in an area where grain was drying in Przewodow, a village near the border with Ukraine.
\nRussia\u2019s Defense Ministry denied being behind \u201cany strikes on targets near the Ukrainian-Polish border\u201d and said in a statement that photos of purported damage \u201chave nothing to do\u201d with Russian weapons.
\nPolish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau summoned the Russian ambassador and \u201cdemanded immediate detailed explanations,\u201d the government said.
\nThe Russian bombardment also affected neighboring Moldova. It reported massive power outages after the strikes in Ukraine disconnected a power line to the small nation.
\nThe assault killed at least one person in a residential building in Ukraine\u2019s capital, Kyiv. It followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one of its biggest military successes \u2014 the retaking last week of the southern city of Kherson.
\nWith its battlefield losses mounting, Russia has increasingly resorted to targeting Ukraine\u2019s power grid, seemingly hoping to turn the approach of winter into a weapon by leaving people in the cold and dark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PRZEWODOW, Poland: US President Joe Biden and other Western backers of Ukraine threw their weight Wednesday behind an investigation into why and how a missile that Poland said was Russian-made came down in Polish farmland, killing two people, when Russia was savaging the Ukrainian power grid with missiles and exploding drones. Biden said it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295589,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[11431,305,4913,456],"class_list":{"0":"post-295579","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-missile-blast","9":"tag-poland","10":"tag-probe","11":"tag-ukraine"},"yoast_head":"\n