Ukraine tempers its statements. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday he “doesn’t know what happened” in Poland, where a missile landed on Tuesday, killing two people, while assuring the missile was “Russian.”
“I don’t know what happened. We don’t know for sure. The world doesn’t know. But I’m sure it was a Russian missile, I’m sure we fired from air defense systems,” he said. quoted in a statement by the Ukrainian presidency.
“But it is impossible to talk about something specific today – that it was about the air defense of Ukraine,” he adds.
On Wednesday, on television, he had maintained that it was not a Ukrainian missile: “I think it was a Russian missile, according to the report of the Ukrainian army,” he declared, while NATO officials considered that it was probably a missile missile of the ukrainian system air defense.
The fall of the missile on the Polish town of Przewodow raised fears that NATO could become involved in the conflict – causing a great escalation – in Ukraine, since Poland is protected by a collective defense commitment of the Atlantic Alliance.
Russia responsible “at the end of the count”
Russia denied firing the missile, and Warsaw itself deemed it “highly likely” that it was a Ukrainian anti-aircraft shell, citing “an unfortunate accident.” The missile killed two men in Przewodow by hitting an agricultural building, leaving Poland in shock and its army on high alert.
The White House has not “seen anything that contradicts” the hypothesis, advanced by Warsaw, according to which this missile came “in all probability” from the Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense, estimated this Wednesday a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Adrienne Watson.
“That said, regardless of the final conclusions, it is clear that Russia bears ultimate responsibility for this tragic incident” due to its attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, he said in a statement, adding: “Ukraine had and has the right to defend itself. “.
The Ukrainian president announced on Thursday that Ukrainian specialists will go there to take part in the international commission of inquiry into the incident.
Source: BFM TV
