Poland has demanded answers from Russia after two missiles landed along its border with Ukraine, killing two people, its Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed Tuesday night.
In a statement, spokesperson Łukasz Jasina said a Russian-made missile dropped on the village of Przewodow at 3:40 p.m. local time, killing two Polish citizens.
Jasina added that Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Zbigniew Rau summoned the Russian ambassador and “demanded immediate and detailed explanation.”
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President Andrzej Duda said Poland has no conclusive evidence showing who fired the missile in an escalation of the war in Ukraine that now threatens to drag NATO into direct conflict with Moscow.
“We do not have any conclusive evidence at the moment as to who launched this missile... it was most likely a Russian-made missile, but this is all still under investigation at the moment,” he told reporters.
U.S. President Joe Biden echoed those concerns late Tuesday in Indonesia, warning preliminary evidence suggested the missile was not fired from Russia while claiming “we’re going to make sure exactly what happened. I don’t want to say until we completely investigate, but it’s unlikely... that it was fired from Russia. But we’ll see.”
A statement from the Polish Foreign Ministry identified the missile as being made in Russia.
Meanwhile, the Polish prime minister convened an urgent security meeting with the Committee of the Council of Ministers for National Security and Defense Affairs, government spokesman Piotr Müller announced on Twitter.
“The Prime Minister called as a matter of urgency the Committee of the Council of Ministers for National Security and Defense Affairs,” Müller said.
A spokesperson for the Polish Embassy in Washington, D.C., confirmed the prime minister called the meeting and told The Daily Beast the meeting was ongoing as of 2:01 p.m. ET. The spokesperson declined to share the purpose of the meeting.
Müller said the meeting was in response to a “crisis situation,” according to the AP, and the Polish government is raising the military readiness level of its bases, a government spokesperson said, according to local reporters.
The origins of the reported explosion were not immediately clear, local media reported. Quoting an anonymous senior U.S. intelligence official, the AP reported that the incident was the result of Russian missiles crossing into Poland.
The reported attack on Poland, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), could raise questions for the military alliance about whether Article V could be triggered and pull other countries into a conflict. If a NATO member is the victim of an attack, other members can consider it an attack on the alliance writ large and pursue retaliatory action.
Poland is examining whether it will call for consultations with other NATO allies under Article IV, according to Poland’s delegation to NATO. NATO ambassadors are slated to meet Wednesday at the request of Poland, according to Reuters.
The Pentagon is looking into the reports about missile strikes in Poland, Pentagon Press Secretary Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters Tuesday. He declined to speculate about whether collective response through NATO is relevant in this case at this time.
President Biden spoke with Duda by phone, according to a pool report. Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan spoke with chief of the National Security Bureau of Poland, Jacek Siewiera, as well.
But the Biden administration could not confirm the reports Tuesday, a White House National Security Council spokesperson said.
“We’ve seen these reports out of Poland and are working with the Polish government to gather more information,” the spokesperson said. “We cannot confirm the reports or any of the details at this time. We will determine what happened and what the appropriate next steps would be.”
The potential attack, which The Daily Beast has not independently verified, comes just hours after Russia lobbed one of its largest missile attacks on Ukraine since the invasion earlier this year, impacting electricity in multiple cities including in Kyiv, Rivne, Kharkiv, and Lviv.
The chancellery of Poland’s prime minister did not immediately return request for comment.
Russian ally Belarus, which has served as a launchpad for Russian attacks into Ukraine in recent months, has been accusing Poland of acting provocatively for weeks. Belarusian leaders’ commentary about Poland has raised questions about whether Belarus or Russia have been interested in laying groundwork for attacking neighboring countries over so-called “provocations.”
The head of the border committee of Belarus, Anatoly Lappo, claimed last month that Poland was acting aggressively and warned a harsh response would come.
“[If] there will be at least one bullet in our border guards, the answer will be immediate and cruel,” Lappo said.
Already the Kremlin sought to cast doubts on the reports coming from Poland. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that the reports about the alleged Russian attack in Poland on Tuesday is an attempt from Poland to try to “escalate.”
“The statements of the Polish media and officials about the alleged fall of ‘Russian’ missiles in the area of the settlement of Przewoduv is a deliberate provocation in order to escalate the situation,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Russia claimed Moscow did not conduct any strikes on targets by the Polish border with Ukraine.
While the Biden administration has been hesitant to blame Russia or confirm reports of explosions in Poland just yet, other world leaders, including those from Ukraine, were not. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed Tuesday that Russian missiles hit Poland.
“This is a Russian missile attack on collective security. This is a very significant escalation. We need to act,” he said.
The deputy prime minister and minister of defense for Latvia, Artis Pabriks, claimed the missiles were Russian as well.
“My condolences to our Polish brothers in arms. Criminal Russian regime fired missiles which target not only Ukrainian civilians but also landed on NATO territory in Poland,” Pabriks said. “Latvia fully stands with Polish friends and condemns this crime.”
A spokesperson for Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, said a missile hit Poland.
Moldova, another neighboring country, also reported power outages following the attacks in Ukraine on Tuesday, according to the AP.
“Following Russia’s bombardment against the Ukrainian energy system in the last hour, one of the power lines that ensures the transport of electricity for our country has been disconnected,” Infrastructure Minister Andrei Spinu said. “This has led to massive power outages across the country
