Western leaders held an “emergency roundtable” on Wednesday on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Indonesia, where they urged against jumping to any conclusions about the origins of the strike.
The Associated Press news agency reported that preliminary assessments by U.S officials suggest Ukrainian forces fired a missile at an incoming Russian missile, which struck Poland.
US President Joe Biden said it was “unlikely” the missile had been fired from Russia, while France urged “utmost caution” in identifying who was behind the blast.
Biden spoke by phone with his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda, offering “full US support for and assistance with Poland’s investigation”, the White House said.
The two leaders agreed to “remain in close touch to determine appropriate next steps as the investigation proceeds”, it added.
Read also: US, allies to ‘figure out what happened’ with Poland strike
Moscow’s ambassador has been summoned to provide “immediate detailed explanations” and the military had been put on heightened alert after an emergency national security council meeting, Polish authorities said.
“There has been a decision to raise the state of readiness of some combat units and other uniformed services,” spokesman Piotr Muller told reporters after the meeting in Warsaw, adding that “our services are on the ground at the moment working out what happened”.
Russia has denied involvement and said Wednesday that images published from the site of a blast in Poland showed fragments of a Ukrainian missile, and that Moscow’s nearest strike on Ukraine was 35 kilometres (20 miles) from the Polish border.
“Photographs of the wreckage... were unequivocally identified by Russian military experts as fragments of a guided anti-aircraft missile of a Ukrainian S-300 air defence system,” the Russian defence ministry said in a statement.
“Precision strikes were carried out on targets only on the territory of Ukraine and at a distance of no closer than 35 kilometres from the Ukrainian-Polish border,” it added.
The strikes drew widespread condemnation, with European Union chief Charles Michel saying he was “shocked” and French President Emmanuel Macron calling for talks at the G20 summit underway in Indonesia.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday during a telephone call with his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda offered condolences following reports that an alleged Russian missile attack had left two dead in Poland.
“Expressed condolences over the death of Polish citizens from Russian missile terror. We exchanged available information and are clarifying all the facts.
Ukraine, Poland, all of Europe and the world must be fully protected from terrorist Russia,” Zelensky said in an English-language tweet.
Missile strikes hit cities across Ukraine on Tuesday and prompted mass power outages, a few days after a humiliating Russian retreat in the nation’s south and in the middle of the G20 summit.
According to the New York Times, Vedant Patel, a U.S. State Department spokesman, said the US was working with the Polish government and other members of NATO to gather more information.
Speaking to our colleagues from RTL Radio on Wednesday morning, Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean Asselborn stated that “it seems indeed” as if the explosion was caused by “Ukrainian defence missiles.” However, Asselborn also stressed that “those would not have been fired if Russia hadn’t attacked Ukraine.” The Minister hopes that it was an accident because a deliberate Russian attack would have “dire consequences.” But even an accident “could have triggered something disastrous.” Asselborn wonders how Putin justifies attacking Ukraine in the first place, describing the Russian leader as “a president who is increasingly isolated on the international stage but doesn’t realise it.”
