There was an immediate storm of reaction after two Russian missiles reportedly went off course over Ukraine and hit a Polish village, killing two people on November 15.
The incident led to widespread calls for Poland to invoke Nato’s Article 5 that calls on all Nato members to come to the aid of any member that is attacked by a hostile power. Some called the missile strike the “Sarajevo moment” of the Ukrainian war, referring to the assassin’s bomb in the Serbian capital that sparked World War I. And conspiracy theories of what actually happened abounded…
According to initial reports, one or two Russian missiles fell near the village of Przewodu in Lublin Voivodeship, on the border with Ukraine, where they hit a farm and killed two residents. US intelligence sources confirmed that the missiles came from Russia and crossed into Poland.
Often…and at best…military hardware relies on explosive force generated over a sizable area to achieve a goal. Not precision guidance.
The latest video news discussions from Europe further advance the conclusion these were Russian SA-20 series anti-aircraft missiles. Typically fired in pairs to bracket incoming aircraft (or, nowadays, incoming missiles), debris has been identified as “probable” Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles.
PRZEWODOW, Poland (AP) — NATO member Poland and the head of the military alliance both said Wednesday that a missile strike in Polish farmland that killed two people appeared to be unintentional and was probably launched by air defenses in neighboring Ukraine. Russia had been bombarding Ukraine at the time in an attack that savaged its power grid.
“Ukraine’s defense was launching their missiles in various directions, and it is highly probable that one of these missiles unfortunately fell on Polish territory,” said Polish President Andrzej Duda. “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest that it was an intentional attack on Poland.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, at a meeting of the 30-nation military alliance in Brussels, echoed the preliminary Polish findings. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, however, disputed them and asked for further investigation. https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-g-20-summit-nato-biden-government-and-politics-c76bead57a11bc8397a30ee7bb06264e