U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith said Wednesday that Russia is «ultimately responsible» for the missile strike in Poland, as the incident in which two Polish citizens were killed in a border township is linked to the Russian offensive against Ukrainian civilians.
«We all believe that ultimately Russia bears responsibility (for the incident) because, regardless of where this investigation lands, none of this would have happened if Russia had not been firing attacks on civilians inside Ukraine,» Smith told CNN after an emergency meeting of allied ambassadors at NATO headquarters.
The U.S. representative said that the «crystal clear» message coming out of the meeting is that the allies stand in solidarity with Warsaw and will continue to support Ukraine’s right to defend its territory.
In response to the alarms generated on Tuesday by the possible Russian attack against a NATO ally, Smith stressed that the meeting had passed with «calm» and «tranquility», since NATO has an important presence on the eastern flank, which has been successively nurtured after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the recent invasion ordered by Vladimir Putin last February.
In his view, it is this military presence that ensures that such incidents do not happen again. As confirmed Wednesday by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg after the meeting with the 30 allies, preliminary analysis points to the fact that the missile that hit Poland was fired by Ukrainian anti-aircraft defenses to repel a Russian attack.
Stoltenberg has ruled out the scenario of a Russian attack against a member of the Atlantic Alliance. «There are no indications that it was the result of a deliberate attack and we have no indications that Russia is preparing offensive military actions against NATO,» he said.
Although, the former Norwegian prime minister has denounced that this case is a «direct result» of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and came in the midst of a wave of attacks on Ukrainian cities. «This is not Ukraine’s fault,» he insisted.
