Polish President Andrzej Duda ruled out on Wednesday that Tuesday’s missile strike on Polish soil was an intentional attack against the country and focused the blame on Russia for invading Ukraine.
At a press conference, the Polish president said that «there are no indications that there has been an intentional attack against Poland» and stressed that the launch «was not aimed» at Polish territory. Thus, he pointed out that «the fact that the projectile fell does not imply that it was an intentional act».
After meeting with the Cabinet, Duda recalled that throughout Tuesday more than a hundred missiles of various types were launched against Ukraine. «This led to the fact that the border areas were also shelled, such as Lviv and Volin. Russian missiles have fallen on cities in that part of Ukraine, which has also defended itself with shelling,» he asserted, according to information from the daily ‘Rzeczpospolita’.
Thus, he stressed that «the Russian side is the real culprit for everything that happened yesterday» and detailed that the explosion took place only six kilometers from the Ukrainian border. «Most likely it was a Russian-made projectile, an S-300 from the 1970s,» he said.
In this sense, he explained that for now «there are no indications that the missile was launched from Russian territory», but he pointed out that «there are indications that it is a defense missile used, for example, by the Ukrainian forces».
«There were Russian missiles traversing the sky in different directions and probably some of them turned eastward before heading towards Polish territory. Ukrainian defense systems have launched rockets in these directions and it is possible that one of them fell on Polish territory,» he clarified after sources close to the matter said that Warsaw plans to set aside the activation of Article 4 of the NATO treaty while it awaits «more evidence» on what happened.
