Despite the US, Poland, and NATO’s Secretary General all having at this point admitted that Tuesday’s deadly Polish border incident was not due to a Russian attack, but instead was “likely caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile” – according to Jens Stoltenberg’s own words, on Wednesday the Ukrainian government is still clinging to its accusations that Russia attacked a NATO ally.
Doubling down on the claims, Kyiv is now requesting immediate access to the site of the blast in the Polish village of Przewod?w, in order to conduct its own investigation. And yet it sounds like Ukrainian officials are already ‘certain’ in their conclusions. “Ukraine requests immediate access to the site of the explosion,” Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, said on Twitter.
“We advocate for a joint examination of the incident with the missile’s landing in Poland,” he added.
But that’s when Danilov cited “evidence” in Ukraine’s possession pointing to Russia being behind the missile that rained down on the Polish village, killing two. “We are ready to hand over evidence of the Russian trace that we have.”
At the same time, Ukraine is now demanding Poland and NATO’s own evidence after both asserted the blast was likely due to an errant Ukrainian anti-air missile. “We are expecting information from our partners, based on which a conclusion was made that it’s a [Ukrainian] air defense missile,” Danilov said.
In a separate statement, the top Ukrainian official echoed Zelensky’s previous day assessment that this was an act of Russian “missile terror” – but qualified that Kyiv remains “completely open to a comprehensive study of the situation.”
Importantly, Zelensky had urged NATO to take “action” – presumably military action against Russia, in a highly dangerous moment that many feared could have quickly spiraled into WWIII – if NATO had decided in that moment to simply take Zelensky at this word. Zelensky was even talking “collective defense” of NATO. Instead of an apology, at this point it’s clear Ukraine is going to vehemently hold to its narrative.
