WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s defense minister said Tuesday that his country will accept a Patriot missile defense system which Germany offered to deploy to Poland last month.
The German offer was made after an errant missile fell in Poland near the border with Ukraine, killing two Polish men.
Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak had initially said he accepted the offer with “satisfaction.” But he and other Polish officials later said they felt the Patriot system should be placed in Ukraine, something Germany was unwilling to do.
What appeared to be Poland cold-shouldering Germany’s offer created strains in the relationship between the two neighboring countries, which have a difficult history but today are important trade partners and allies in NATO.
Blaszczak said Tuesday on Twitter he was sorry Germany did not want to place the Patriot system in Ukraine.
“I was disappointed to accept the decision to reject the support of Ukraine,” he wrote. “Placing the Patriots in western Ukraine would increase the security of Poles and Ukrainians.”
Nonetheless, he said the two side were proceeding “with arrangements regarding the placement of the launcher in Poland and connecting them to our command system.”
Germany has said the Patriot system offered to Poland was part of NATO’s integrated air defense and only to be deployed on NATO territory.
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European Union countries have agreed to put a cap on Russian oil prices of $60 per barrel, bringing an end to days of arguments over how hard to hit Vladimir Putin’s fossil fuel revenues.
According to EU diplomats, a deal was struck on Friday after Poland, which had been holding out for a harsher cap, came on board.
Under the agreement, countries will ban their insurance and shipping firms from facilitating Russian oil shipments to third countries if they are sold above the capped price.
The system will be reviewed every two months, one of the diplomats said. The aim is for the cap to be set at a level which is at least 5 percent below the market price for Russian crude during the review process, the diplomat added.
The EU plan was drawn up following a proposal from the G7 leading democracies to cap the price paid for Russian oil and is now expected to be implemented widely.
“The EU agreement on an oil price cap, coordinated with G7 and others, will reduce Russia’s revenues significantly,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. “It will help us stabilize global energy prices, benefitting emerging economies around the world.”
The key question now is how Russia responds.
The $60 price is higher than the level at which Russia currently sells its crude oil — which is trading at a discount to benchmark prices. That gives Putin room to dismiss the West’s move as meaningless. He has threatened to cut production, which could drive up global oil prices, and to not supply countries that sign up to the cap.
EU sanctions coming into force from Monday will ban seaborne imports of Russian oil. The sanctions package also contained a ban on shipping insurance for tankers transporting Russian oil around the world but the price cap would override this, lessening the disruption to markets.
There had been fears that the EU sanctions would trigger a surge in oil prices if shipping insurance had been unavailable. As talks dragged on among EU countries in Brussels, the U.S., which first proposed the cap, intervened in an attempt to break the deadlock. Poland also secured a commitment from Brussels to begin work on a new package of sanctions against Moscow.
Poland, Estonia and Lithuania had been leading demands for a harsher cap to cause maximum damage to Putin’s war chest.
“I welcome the EU’s political agreement on setting a price cap on Russian oil,” Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said on Twitter. “Crippling Russia’s energy revenues is at the core of stopping Russia’s war machine.”
She added that Estonia had been hoping for a cap in the range of $30 to $40 a barrel, which “would substantially hurt Russia.”
“However, this is the best compromise we could get today,” she said. “We will have the first review of the price already in mid-January.”
America Hernandez and Barbara Moens contributed reporting
BERLIN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Tuesday that his country’s offer to send Patriot anti-missile systems to Poland remains on the table despite Warsaw’s suggestion that they should go to Ukraine instead.
Poland’s proposal has received a cool response from Berlin, where some are concerned that deploying Patriots to Ukraine could draw NATO into the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Defense experts say training for the highly sophisticated system could also take years, meaning it would not meet Ukraine’s immediate needs.
“Our offer to the Polish government to protect their own country is not yet off the table,” Scholz told reporters during a news conference in Berlin.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, NATO beefed up defenses along its eastern flank. The alliance deployed U.S. Patriot batteries to Poland and German Patriot batteries to Slovakia, as well as a French equivalent system to Romania.
Scholz said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had thanked Germany during a call Tuesday for the financial and military support it has provided to Kyiv so far, including air defense systems.
Germany is looking into providing more Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns to Ukraine, as well as the IRIS-T surface-to-air missile system, he said.
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All eyes will be on Lionel Messi and his Argentina side on Saturday as they look turn around a dreadful start to the World Cup.
La Albiceleste were humiliated when they threw away the lead to lose 2-1 to Saudi Arabia in their opening Group G match at the World Cup.
The seven-time Ballon d’Or winner, who has yet to lift the World Cup trophy, didn’t hide from the embarrassment of Argentina’s defeat.
When asked about the team’s morale Messi replied: “Dead.”
It is not the first time that Argentina have lost their opening game unexpectedly.
In 1990, Argentina was on the receiving end of the one of the greatest shocks in World Cup history, losing to Cameroon.
However Argentina recovered to reach the final, before losing to West Germany.
If Argentina is to emulate that 1990 run, La Albiceleste will have to get past a stubborn Mexico, led by World Cup icon Guillermo Ochoa.
The Mexican keeper rose to fame over the last two World Cups, winning the Man of the Match award twice in 2014 with his superb shot-stopping.
Ochoa added to his mythic status this tournament when he saved a penalty from Robert Lewandowski in Mexico’s 0-0 draw with Poland.
Because Mexico and Poland drew, it is not quite do-or-die yet for Messi and Argentina, but they cannot afford to lose again if they want to progress from the group.
Having beaten Argentina, Saudi Arabia has become the story of the tournament.
The Green Falcons caused the biggest upset in the history of the World Cup by beating Argentina and after footage emerged of coach Hervé Renard’s impassioned half-time speech, they have become a surprise fan-favorite at the competition.
The Saudis beat the biggest team in the group, but the job is certainly not done.
Without injured midfielder Yasser Al-Shahrani their task will be much harder against a Poland side knowing it needs to pick up points, especially with a fixture against Argentina still to come
Poland themselves are desperate to make it out of the group, not least because that hasn’t happened since 1986.
No one wants that more than Robert Lewandowski. The striker will go down as one of the greatest goalscorers of his generation and is already both Poland’s most capped player and top scorer with 76 goals.
However, the Barcelona forward has remarkably never scored a World Cup goal. He played in all three games in Russia 2018 but struggled as the team ended bottom of their group.
He had a perfect chance to score in Poland’s opening Group G game against Mexico, but failed to convert his penalty.
France take on Euro 2020 semifinalist Denmark in the most intriguing encounter of the day.
After a sluggish start against Australia, France moved through the gears to thrash the Socceroos as Olivier Giroud equaled Thierry Henry’s record as the all-time top scorer for Le Bleu.
Questions hung over France before its campaign due to a number of with injuries, but Les Bleus quickly dispelled any anxiety as Kylian Mbappé and co. were at their terrific best.
Denmark won’t be a pushover, having already beaten France home and away in 2022.
The Danes, led by a fit-again Christian Eriksen, are touted by many as “dark horses” for the World Cup. But the team struggled against Tunisia despite coming inches wide from winning when Andreas Cornelius managed to miss the ball when he had a tap-in.
Saturday’s first match is between Tunisia and Australia.
The Socceroos got off to a terrific start against France taking the lead, before falling apart against the world champion.
And they will back themselves to get a win against Tunisia in a match where both teams need victory if they want to make it out of the group.
Nine months after invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is beginning to fracture the West.
Top European officials are furious with Joe Biden’s administration and now accuse the Americans of making a fortune from the war, while EU countries suffer.
“The fact is, if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the U.S. because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons,” one senior official told POLITICO.
The explosive comments — backed in public and private by officials, diplomats and ministers elsewhere — follow mounting anger in Europe over American subsidies that threaten to wreck European industry. The Kremlin is likely to welcome the poisoning of the atmosphere among Western allies.
“We are really at a historic juncture,” the senior EU official said, arguing that the double hit of trade disruption from U.S. subsidies and high energy prices risks turning public opinion against both the war effort and the transatlantic alliance. “America needs to realize that public opinion is shifting in many EU countries.”
The EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell called on Washington to respond to European concerns. “Americans — our friends — take decisions which have an economic impact on us,” he said in an interview with POLITICO.
The biggest point of tension in recent weeks has been Biden’s green subsidies and taxes that Brussels says unfairly tilt trade away from the EU and threaten to destroy European industries. Despite formal objections from Europe, Washington has so far shown no sign of backing down.
At the same time, the disruption caused by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is tipping European economies into recession, with inflation rocketing and a devastating squeeze on energy supplies threatening blackouts and rationing this winter.
As they attempt to reduce their reliance on Russian energy, EU countries are turning to gas from the U.S. instead — but the price Europeans pay is almost four times as high as the same fuel costs in America. Then there’s the likely surge in orders for American-made military kit as European armies run short after sending weapons to Ukraine.
It’s all got too much for top officials in Brussels and other EU capitals. French President Emmanuel Macron said high U.S. gas prices were not “friendly” and Germany’s economy minister has called on Washington to show more “solidarity” and help reduce energy costs.
Ministers and diplomats based elsewhere in the bloc voiced frustration at the way Biden’s government simply ignores the impact of its domestic economic policies on European allies.
When EU leaders tackled Biden over high U.S. gas prices at the G20 meeting in Bali last week, the American president simply seemed unaware of the issue, according to the senior official quoted above. Other EU officials and diplomats agreed that American ignorance about the consequences for Europe was a major problem.
“The Europeans are discernibly frustrated about the lack of prior information and consultation,” said David Kleimann of the Bruegel think tank.
Officials on both sides of the Atlantic recognize the risks that the increasingly toxic atmosphere will have for the Western alliance. The bickering is exactly what Putin would wish for, EU and U.S. diplomats agreed.
The growing dispute over Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — a huge tax, climate and health care package — has put fears over a transatlantic trade war high on the political agenda again. EU trade ministers are due to discuss their response on Friday as officials in Brussels draw up plans for an emergency war chest of subsidies to save European industries from collapse.
“The Inflation Reduction Act is very worrying,” said Dutch Trade Minister Liesje Schreinemacher. “The potential impact on the European economy is very big.”
“The U.S. is following a domestic agenda, which is regrettably protectionist and discriminates against U.S. allies,” said Tonino Picula, the European Parliament’s lead person on the transatlantic relationship.
An American official stressed the price setting for European buyers of gas reflects private market decisions and is not the result of any U.S. government policy or action. “U.S. companies have been transparent and reliable suppliers of natural gas to Europe,” the official said. Exporting capacity has also been limited by an accident in June that forced a key facility to shut down.
In most cases, the official added, the difference between the export and import prices doesn’t go to U.S. LNG exporters, but to companies reselling the gas within the EU. The largest European holder of long-term U.S. gas contracts is France’s TotalEnergies for example.
It’s not a new argument from the American side but it doesn’t seem to be convincing the Europeans. “The United States sells us its gas with a multiplier effect of four when it crosses the Atlantic,” European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton said on French TV on Wednesday. “Of course the Americans are our allies … but when something goes wrong it is necessary also between allies to say it.”
Cheaper energy has quickly become a huge competitive advantage for American companies, too. Businesses are planning new investments in the U.S. or even relocating their existing businesses away from Europe to American factories. Just this week, chemical multinational Solvay announced it is choosing the U.S. over Europe for new investments, in the latest of a series of similar announcements from key EU industrial giants.
Allies or not?
Despite the energy disagreements, it wasn’t until Washington announced a $369 billion industrial subsidy scheme to support green industries under the Inflation Reduction Act that Brussels went into full-blown panic mode.
“The Inflation Reduction Act has changed everything,” one EU diplomat said. “Is Washington still our ally or not?”
For Biden, the legislation is a historic climate achievement. “This is not a zero-sum game,” the U.S. official said. “The IRA will grow the pie for clean energy investments, not split it.”
But the EU sees that differently. An official from France’s foreign affairs ministry said the diagnosis is clear: These are “discriminatory subsidies that will distort competition.” French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire this week even accused the U.S. of going down China’s path of economic isolationism, urging Brussels to replicate such an approach. “Europe must not be the last of the Mohicans,” he said.
The EU is preparing its responses, such as a big subsidy push to prevent European industry from being wiped out by American rivals. “We are experiencing a creeping crisis of trust on trade issues in this relationship,” said German MEP Reinhard Bütikofer.
“At some point, you have to assert yourself,” said French MEP Marie-Pierre Vedrenne. “We are in a world of power struggles. When you arm-wrestle, if you are not muscular, if you are not prepared both physically and mentally, you lose.”
Behind the scenes, there is also growing irritation about the money flowing into the American defense sector.
The U.S. has by far been the largest provider of military aid to Ukraine, supplying more than $15.2 billion in weapons and equipment since the start of the war. The EU has so far provided about €8 billion of military equipment to Ukraine, according to Borrell.
According to one senior official from a European capital, restocking of some sophisticated weapons may take “years” because of problems in the supply chain and the production of chips. This has fueled fears that the U.S. defense industry can profit even more from the war.
The Pentagon is already developing a roadmap to speed up arms sales, as the pressure from allies to respond to greater demands for weapons and equipment grows.
Another EU diplomat argued that “the money they are making on weapons” could help Americans understand that making “all this cash on gas” might be “a bit too much.”
The diplomat argued that a discount on gas prices could help us to “keep united our public opinions” and to negotiate with third countries on gas supplies. “It’s not good, in terms of optics, to give the impression that your best ally is actually making huge profits out of your troubles,” the diplomat said.
Giorgio Leali, Stuart Lau, Camille Gijs, Sarah Anne Aarup and Gloria Gonzalez contributed reporting.
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Barbara Moens, Jakob Hanke Vela and Jacopo Barigazzi
WARSAW, Poland — A funeral was held Saturday for one of two Polish men who died in a missile explosion near the border with Ukraine, deaths that Western officials said appeared to have been caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile that went astray.
White roses were placed on the wooden casket of Boguslaw Wos. A family member carried a black-and-white photo of him, while another man carried a crucifix bearing his name. Polish state news agency PAP described Wos as a 62-year-old warehouse manager.
Wos and another man died Tuesday in Przewodow, a small farming community 6 kilometers (4 miles) from the border with Ukraine as that country was defending itself against a barrage of Russian missiles directed at Ukraine’s power infrastructure.
Officials from Poland, NATO and the United States say they think Russia is to blame for the deaths no matter what because a Ukrainian missile would not have gone astray in Poland had the country not been forced to defend itself against Russian attacks.
A Polish investigation to determine the source of the missile and the circumstances of the explosion was launched with support from the U.S. and Ukrainian investigators.
To assist, the Pentagon sent a small team of forensics and explosive ordnance device experts to the missile impact site in Przewodow, a senior defense official said Friday on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to discuss details.
Wos’ funeral took place in a village church and he was to be buried in the local cemetery, PAP said. A military honor guard and Polish officials and Ukrainian representatives joined the man’s family and members of the community but the Wos family asked that media not attend.
Ukraine’s consul general in the nearby city of Lublin placed a wreath in the colors of Ukraine, PAP reported.
The other victim, a 60-year-old tractor driver, is to be buried on Sunday.
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Tara Copp in Washington contributed.
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World Cup 2022 in Qatar: The wait is almost over for the world’s biggest sporting event. Fans eagerly waiting for the FIFA World Cup 2022, which would kick off on November 20 and culminate on December 18, can now count the remaining hours at their fingertips. Qatar is the first country in the Middle East country, and second in Asia, after Japan and South Korea, to host the prestigious sporting event.
Also, for the first time in its 92-year history, the tournament is taking place in November and December rather than in the middle of the year as Qatar is one of the hottest nations in the world.
Qatar: The host
The selection of Qatar as the host country of the 2022 World Cup was done in 2010. As per reports, the country has spent a whopping $300 billion on the tournament’s preparations. It has developed highways, hotels, recreation areas, and six new football stadiums and upgraded two along with training sites at an estimated cost of up to $10 billion to accommodate world-class players. The stadiums where the matches will be played are Al Bayt Stadium, Khalifa International Stadium, Al Thumama Stadium, Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium, Lusail Stadium, Ras Abu Aboud Stadium, Education City Stadium, and Al Janoub Stadium, to hold the tournament. With 80,000 seats, Lusail Iconic Stadium is the largest stadium of the upcoming world cup.
Qatar’s investment has caught everyone’s eye as it is much higher as compared to other hosts. Picture this: Russia spent $11.6 billion spent for the FIFA World Cup in 2018, Brazil invested $15 billion in 2014, South Africa shelled out $3.6 billion in 2010. Before that, Germany spent $4.3 billion in 2006, Japan $7 billion in 2002, France $2.3 billion in 1998, and the US $500 million in 1994.
Besides, the host country was in the middle of many controversies starting from the ban of beer sales inside the stadiums, its strict rules on homosexuality, and lastly, serious abuse and mistreatment of migrant workers who built the tournament’s infrastructure.
Match details
Thirty-two countries will be taking part in football’s biggest event. This tournament will kick start with a Group A match between hosts Qatar and Ecuador on November 20. The opening game will be played at the Al Bayt Stadium in Al Khor, while the final match takes place on December 18 at the Lusail Stadium in Lusail.
Groups and leagues
The 32 countries have been divided into eight groups with four teams each. There will be group matches, followed by knockout matches, quarterfinals, semifinals and the final to crown the champions on December 18.
The groups are:
GROUP A: Qatar (hosts), Ecuador, Senegal, Netherlands.
GROUP B: England, Iran, United States, Wales.
GROUP C: Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Poland.
GROUP D: France, Australia, Denmark, Tunisia.
GROUP E: Spain, Costa Rica, Germany, Japan.
GROUP F: Belgium, Canada, Morocco, Croatia.
GROUP G: Brazil, Serbia, Switzerland, Cameroon.
GROUP H: Portugal, Ghana, Uruguay, South Korea.
Ticket prices
Pricing on tickets depends on a variety of factors such as who is playing, the stage of the tournament, and more. As per FIFA, nearly three million tickets have been sold across the eight stadiums in Qatar. The tournament is expected to deliver record revenue for the organising body, much more than what it had earned ($5.4 billion) in Russia. The total ticket revenue is estimated to be about $1 billion, as per news reports.
There are 4 categories in the tickets:
Category 1 is the highest-priced ticket and is located in prime areas within the stadium.
Category 2 and Category 3 are tickets that are placed in seating areas within the stadium that offer a less optimal view of the action.
Category 4 is tickets within the stadium that are reserved exclusively for residents of Qatar.
The estimated base ticket prices are as follows:
Match
Cat. 1
Cat. 2
Cat. 3
Cat. 4
Opening Match
$618
$440
$302
$55
Group Matches
$220
$165
$69
$11
Round of 16
$275
$206
$96
$19
Quarterfinals Matches
$426
$288
$206
$82
Semifinals Matches
$956
$659
$357
$137
Third-Place Match
$426
$302
$206
$82
Final Match
$1607
$1003
$604
$206
Tournament format
The tournament will start off with group-stage matches, where only the top two teams from each of the eight groups survive. Following this, 16 group-stage teams will advance to the single-game knockout stages — Round of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals, and final — where the winner moves on and the loser goes home.
The knockout matches, if end without any results, will be decided on extra time, penalty kicks, sudden death methods, if necessary, to determine the victor.
In the wake of the Russia-Ukraine War, the Polish national football team was escorted by F16 fighter jets on their way to the Middle-Eastern country as they flew to Qatar for participating in FIFA World Cup. Poland would begin their World Cup campaign against Mexico on November 22.
The FIFA World Cup in Qatar will be held starting November 20 to December 18.
The reason for being escorted by F16 fighter jets is because of the tensions around the Ukraine-Russia border amid the ongoing war between the two countries. Since, Poland shares its border with both Ukraine and Russia, extra care was taken and two F16 planes can be seen flying alongside the squad.
Interestingly, Poland would be guiding the team into their first FIFA World Cup knockouts for the first time since 1986.
The footage was posted by the official Twitter account of the Polish team and has already been viewed over 5.7 million times. The Poland national team’s official Twitter account posted: “We were escorted to the southern border of Poland by F16 planes!”
The team, in another post, said, “Thank you and greetings to the pilots!”
Poland will start their campaign in the Group C clash against Mexico on Tuesday. The Robert Lewandowski-led side then takes on Saudi Arabia on November 26, before squaring off against Lionel Messi’s Argentina in an anticipated clash on November 30.
Here’s the list of Poland’s 26-man squads playing in the FIFA tournament:
Keeper Bartlomiej Dragowski misses the World Cup after suffering a serious ankle injury and has been replaced by FC Copenhagen keeper Kamil Grabara.
Goalkeepers: Wojciech Szczesny (Juventus),Lukasz Skorupski (Bologna), Kamil Grabara (FC Copenhagen).
Defenders: Jan Bednarek (Aston Villa), Kamil Glik (Benevento), Robert Gumny (FC Augsburg), Artur Jedrzejczyk (Legia Warsaw), Jakub Kiwior (Spezia), Mateusz Wieteska (Clermont), Bartosz Bereszynski (Sampdoria), Matty Cash (Aston Villa), Nicola Zalewski (AS Roma).
Midfielders: Krystian Bielik (Birmingham City), Przemyslaw Frankowski (Lens), Kamil Grosicki (Pogon Szczecin), Grzegorz Krychowiak (Al-Shabab), Jakub Kaminski (VfL Wolfsburg), Michal Skoras (Lech Poznan), Damian Szymanski (AEK Athens), Sebastian Szymanski (Feyenoord), Piotr Zielinski (Napoli), Szymon Zurkowski (Fiorentina).
Forwards: Robert Lewandowski (Barcelona), Arkadiusz Milik (Juventus), Krzysztof Piatek (Salernitana), Karol Swiderski (Charlotte FC).
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
LVIV, Ukraine — Inna missed her father’s funeral.
The grieving 36-year-old Ukrainian lawyer learned of his death as she and her two young daughters — one aged seven, the other five — boarded a flight from Heathrow Airport in London to Poland.
It was at the mist-shrouded railway station at Przemyśl, 16 kilometers from the Poland-Ukraine border, that her plan to pay her graveside respects unraveled, as salvoes of Russian missiles slammed into Ukraine’s power grid, also impacting Inna’s hometown of Vinnytsia.
The barrage on the country’s energy infrastructure — the worst it’s experienced since October 10 — not only threw major cities and small villages into darkness and cold, but it’s also wreaked havoc on Ukraine’s railways, grinding trains to a halt and leaving them powerless at stations.
Away from the front lines of battle, this is what Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine looks like — a slight, dignified blond-haired woman, with two young children in tow, trying to mourn her father and reach her 72-year-old mother to comfort her.
Knowing the journey back home would be arduous, Inna had tried to persuade her daughters to stay in Clapham, south London, where the three have been living with an English family for the past six months. “They have been very kind to us,” she explained.
Inna’s studying business administration now. Her daughters are in school. “Six months ago, they knew no English; it was hard at first for them,” she told me. Now, the kids chatter away in English, with the elder explaining her favorite thing to do at school is drawing; and the younger chiming in to announce she loves swimming.
But that calm, predictable life they’ve been living in England seemed far away right now.
The girls had insisted on accompanying their mother to Ukraine because they wanted to see their grandparents … and their cats. “When is the train coming?” the oldest demanded several times.
And as the night drew in, and the cold settled along the crowded platform at Przemyśl’s train station, other flagging, bundled-up kids started asking the same question, while parents — mainly mothers — tried to work out how to complete their journeys across the border.
As they did so and debated their options, a Polish policewoman insisted that smoking wasn’t allowed on the platform, and volunteers wearing orange or yellow vests offered hot tea, apples and fruit juice. Still, there was no sign of the scheduled train, and no information about it either.
While we waited on the platform, through the windows of a small apartment block across the road, Polish families could be seen glued to their television sets — no doubt absorbing the news that a missile had hit a grain silo in a Polish village just 100 kilometers north of Przemyśl.
As the news added to the disquiet among the Ukrainians at the station, the worry became palpable up and down the platform. Daryna, a dark-haired, middle-aged woman, was heading to see her 21-year-old son. “I’ve been living in Scotland with my daughter,” she said. “But he’s studying in Kyiv, and I want to make sure he’s OK.”
Some families are attempting to return to Ukraine to visit or mourn with family, but Russian attacks on the country’s infrastructure left many asking “When is the train coming?” | Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
“Going home now is like being transported from the normal to the abnormal,” she added.
Galina, the director of a small clothing company, was impatient to see her 10-year-old daughter, whom she left in the care of her grandmother in Kyiv while making a quick business trip to Poland. She kept texting them to make sure they were safe, but reassuring replies didn’t assuage her, as both she and the others kept scrolling on social media for news about their hometowns — Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Khmelnytskyi, Zhytomyr, Poltava, Rivne and Lviv, all affected by the nationwide missile bombardment.
My destination, Lviv, was badly impacted by the recent blasts. Several explosions were heard from the city on Tuesday, prompting Mayor Andriy Sadovyi to warn on his Telegram channel that everyone should “stay in shelter!” However, many won’t have received that message, as neither the internet nor the cellular networks were working in parts of the city. Officials said missiles and drones caused severe damage to the power grid and energy infrastructure, despite reports of successful missile interceptions too.
Some 95 kilometers from Przemyśl, Lviv was cold and damp when we arrived shortly after dawn on Wednesday. After giving up on the train, we’d crossed the border by foot and cadged a lift to the city.
As we made our way there, the city was largely without power, the traffic lights weren’t working, and the air raid sirens were clamoring. The only lights we could see were from buildings equipped with generators.
At my hotel, the manager, Andriy, told me it takes 37 gallons of diesel an hour to keep the electricity flowing, but he cautioned the water might not be that hot. “When the all-clear sounds, we will serve breakfast for another hour,” he added helpfully.
By the time I finished breakfast, electric trains were already up and running again in Lviv, less than a day after the city’s generation and transmission infrastructure was hit, and by evening, the lights were on all across the city — yet further testament to Ukrainian resilience, improvisation and refusal to be cowed.
And elsewhere, too, electrical engineers — the new heroes of Ukrainian resistance — managed to patch up the damage to get trains running and homes lit. “We had a blackout yesterday [Tuesday],” friends in Ternopil, a two-hour drive east of Lviv, told me by text. “The whole city was without electricity and water for several hours. But eventually everything returned to normal,” they added.
But with winter approaching and Russia planning to seemingly try to wear down Ukrainian resistance not so much on the battlefield but by targeting its civilian energy and water infrastructure, there are questions about how the country can ride out the pummeling.
In July and August, tens of thousands of Ukrainians who fled overseas started returning home. Manned by a colorful variety of NGOs and charities at the border crossings into Poland, the tent camps thus became largely redundant as the refugee flood leaving Ukraine turned to a trickle, and the tents eventually came down. But now they may well be needed again.
“A lot of Ukrainians will leave if there’s no heat and no electricity,” predicted Inna. She’s now in a quandary, torn between planning for a life in England — if she can get her mother a visa — or seeing her future in Ukraine.
“I was a property lawyer in Odesa, I had a good life, and things were going well. But that’s all lost,” she said, trailing off, lost in her thoughts.
LVIV, Ukraine — Russia’s missile barrages on Ukraine are having much less impact than Vladimir Putin might have wanted, thanks to Ukrainian improvisation and ingenuity.
The Russian military targeted Ukraine’s power grid last week, firing an estimated billion-euros worth of missiles at the country’s energy infrastructure — but for all that money the net result was to cause blackouts only for a day.
“We are very well prepared, and we think out of the box to coordinate after missile attacks,” Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, chairman of Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s state-owned electricity company, told POLITICO in an exclusive interview.
Engineers game-plan possible scenarios to be ready with “re-routing schemes” to compensate for the loss of a transmission station or — even worse — damage to a generating station. “So even with catastrophic damage, even during these hard times, we are still able to reconnect and deliver energy. Of course, we must curtail consumption to maintain the system’s stability,” he added.
Kudrytskyi says: “We can switch on the lights for 80 to 90 percent of Ukrainians within a day of an attack — although you must understand that’s not precise because it largely depends on the nature of the damage. It takes a few more days after restoring basic delivery to fully stabilize the system.”
That’s remarkable considering Ukraine has lost around 50 percent of its electricity capacity, he said, because of the damage caused by the Russian attacks — part of the Kremlin’s strategy to enlist “General Winter” to wear down Ukrainians and break their spirit. “In my humble opinion, we are doing quite well. This kind of assault, the scale of it, on a power grid has never been seen before in the modern world and therefore we must invent solutions. We don’t have anyone else to consult because simply nobody has ever experienced anything even close to this before,” Kudrytskyi said.
Ukrainians now joke that the country’s notoriously poor public services have improved since Russia’s invasion — instead of waiting weeks for electrical or water repairs, things get fixed in a matter of hours, they quip. And while the missile attack is deepening their anger toward Russia, they are also taking some solace and pride in the ingenuity behind the restoration of power and resumption of the water supply, which relies on Ukrenergo energy for pumping purposes, after missile and drone strikes.
The joke is not lost on Lviv’s mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, who told POLITICO that improvisation is part of the secret behind switching the lights back on.
“The power system wasn’t built with the idea that it would have to withstand attack,” Sadovyi said with a chuckle.
‘Coded to be ingenious’
He said Ukrainians have shaken off a debilitating Soviet mentality, one that says nothing is possible when a problem emerges. “We have discovered we’re coded to be ingenious, to improvise, to come up with solutions, to use what’s available and what’s at hand,” he said.
Last week, as with previous Russian assaults on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure — notably on October 10 — the country’s electrical engineers swung quickly into action to re-program computer systems to re-route power from undamaged transmission stations. The improvised patch-ups take time; and repairing physical damage — when possible — takes even longer.
Foreign experts working in the country also highlight Ukrainian improvisation — and not just in the energy sector.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way. They are doing some amazing things,” says Terry Taylor, a 75-year-old British water engineer who left a comfortable retirement in Oxford to bring his decades of experience working in Asia and Africa to Ukraine.
Taylor’s been overseeing a project for a Danish charity in Mykolaiv, the southern coastal city which has withstood a months-long Russian siege. Thanks to Russia’s sabotaging a pipeline in April, Mykolaiv has been without potable water for half-a-year. “There’s a stunning unity of purpose and passion here; it really is remarkable,” Taylor said. “People just get on with it; clean away debris and repair as best they can,” he told POLITICO.
When it comes to the power grid, the Ukrainians were also prepared — even before Russia’s invasion in February. They had been storing up stocks of spare parts, switches and cabling. “We accumulated significant stock of materials and equipment, probably one of the largest in the world,” Ukrenergo’s Kudrytskyi said.
Until October, when Russian targeting of energy infrastructure started in earnest, Ukraine had even been able to export electricity to the EU, but it is now in need of imports. Kadri Simson, the EU energy commissioner, visited Kyiv on November 1 and expressed the bloc’s readiness to help replenish stocks amid the latest waves of Russian attacks. And it’s a big job.
Strong message
The huge stocks of equipment and material that Ukraine has laid by are running out fast, Kudrytskyi said.
Mayor Sadovyi in Lviv admits that if the attacks continue and the winter is a harsh one, improvisation will have its limits. Sadovyi said that in last week’s attack the Russians managed to cause some damage to the interconnection with neighboring Poland.
“Today my message must be strong. We must be ready to survive without electricity and heating for one, two, maybe three weeks,” he said.
He said Lviv and Ukraine are going to need tens of thousands of diesel- and thermal-power generators.
How many exactly? He pulls a face when asked indicating that it is almost incalculable. Lviv bought three huge diesel generators six months before the war, and they have been used three times to maintain the hot water system for 50 percent of the city’s population, he said.
One of his biggest worries is how to keep Lviv’s main hospital going, which has been expanded enormously to rehabilitate both military and civilian war wounded and to manufacture and fit prosthetics. Sadovyi and other city mayors in Ukraine are in frequent contact to compare notes and to offer each other advice and assistance when they can.
But as the first snows of the season fall and with temperatures already dropping below zero Celsius, he’s in no doubt his city, where he has been mayor for 16 years, could soon be in a perilous position — a sentiment echoed by Kudrytskyi for the whole of Ukraine.
“We are preparing as best we can to build up resilience and we have to be ready for worst-case scenarios,” Kurdrytskyi said. “So, outages may be longer than the standard current five hours, but we are doing everything we can to try to prevent that happening.”
“But our stock is being exhausted,” he said. “We need spare parts, cabling relays for sure, but also some quite large items,” such as transformers and switching equipment. “We need them quickly and we can’t wait for them to be manufactured — we must find them somewhere soon,” Kudrytskyi said.
Aside from that, the energy boss makes a plea — echoed by city mayors like Sadovyi and national Ukrainian political leaders — for the West to supply more air-defense systems to shield the power grid from Russian missiles and air strikes.
“We are fighting on an energy front. More air-defense systems would increase our chances to avoid massive damage to our grid. So the more air-defense systems, the less damage,” he said.
“Because even if you look at the last big onslaught last Tuesday, we managed to knock out 70 or so of the 100 missiles launched at us, giving us a better bet to keep the system integrated, keep it running and to repair [it] than might otherwise have been the case,” Kudrytskyi said.
The European Commission is exploring legal options to confiscate Russian state and private assets as a way to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction, according to a document seen by POLITICO.
The goal would be “identifying ways to strengthen the tracing, identification, freezing and management of assets as preliminary steps for potential confiscation,” according to the document.
The potential bounty would consist of nearly $300 billion frozen Russian central bank assets, as well as assets and revenues of individuals and entities on the EU’s sanctions list. The idea was floated already in May, and is supported by Kyiv, as well as Poland, the Baltics and Slovakia. EU leaders in October tasked the Commission to look into legal options to seize Russian assets currently frozen under sanctions.
But the conundrum is that there’s currently no legal mechanism to confiscate Russian assets — as pointed out by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen back in May. It would need to be created.
“There may be a path for the EU to validly confiscate frozen assets under international law, but it is likely a narrow, a long and an untested path,” said Jan Dunin-Wasowicz, a lawyer at Hughes Hubbard & Reed.
That isn’t deterring the Commission from looking into it.
With regards to private assets belonging to sanctioned people or entities, Brussels is readying proposals to make sanctions evasion an EU crime, a step which would facilitate their confiscation — but only in case of a criminal conviction. Even then, the EU would need to argue each case in court, likely having to litigate for years.
That’s because a lot of these assets would be considered foreign investments, which enjoy protection against expropriation without compensation and a right to fair and equitable treatment under international treaties that Russia has with a lot of EU countries.
The confiscating authority would also need to draw a clear link between the property owner and the conflict in Ukraine.
“To ensure proportionality, you would need to look at who are the owners, what did they do, et cetera,” said Stephan Schill, professor of international and economic law and governance at the University of Amsterdam.
With regards to frozen foreign reserves of the central bank, the largest money pot, the EU executive writes in the document that “these are generally considered to be covered by immunity,” with a footnote pointing to a U.N. convention on jurisdictional immunities of foreign states and their property, which is however not yet in force.
“From an international law perspective, it’s pretty clear that without Russia’s consent you can’t use Russian central bank assets,” said Schill.
As for assets of Russian-owned state enterprises, the paper notes that these wouldn’t be “in principle” covered by such convention, but grabbing them may raise problems linked to the confiscation of private assets, “in addition to the need to demonstrate a sufficient connection to the Russian state.”
The EU is also mulling an “exit tax” on the assets or proceeds from assets of sanctioned individuals that want to transfer their property out of the EU. This could run into legal problems of its own, as it would target a specific group of individuals — which runs counter to non-discrimination provisions in international law — and they in turn could invoke the human right to property as a defence.
To Schill’s knowledge, there is no recent and valid precedent for any of these options.
“The EU and member states are trying to introduce new criminal law,” he said.
NATO’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that there was “no indication” that a missile that landed inside Poland, killing two people on Tuesday, was the result of a deliberate attack by Russia, “and we have no indication that Russia is planning offensive military actions against NATO allies.”
“I think this demonstrates the dangers connected to the ongoing war in Ukraine, but it hasn’t changed our fundamental assessment of the threat against NATO allies,” Stoltenberg told journalists Wednesday after a meeting of NATO’s ambassadors.
Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), speaks during a news conference following a meeting of the North Atlantic Council at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, November 16, 2022.
Bloomberg
He said preliminary findings indicated it was likely the missile was Ukrainian air defense, but that “Russia bears responsibility for what happened in Poland yesterday,” because it was a “direct result” of ongoing Russian attacks on Ukraine.
Poland is a member of NATO, so if the missile strike had been a hostile attack by Russia, it could have triggered a response from the allies under the collective defense treaty underpinning the transatlantic military alliance, including the United States.
The origin of the missile that hit Polish territory Tuesday evening has not been confirmed, but as of Wednesday, both the U.S. and Polish leaders had indicated that it was not likely to have been fired by Russia.
Members of the police are seen near the village of Przewodow, Poland, November 16, 2022, after two people were killed the previous afternoon in an explosion at a farm near the country’s border with Ukraine.
Artur Widak/Anadolu Agency/Getty
President Biden joined other Western leaders in calling for a full investigation into the strike, but said he thought it was unlikely the missile was fired from Russia, based on preliminary evidence on its trajectory, and that it could instead have been the result of a Ukrainian interception or attempted interception of a Russian attack.
“We’ll see,” Mr. Biden said Tuesday. “I’m going to make sure we find out exactly what happened.”
When he arrived back at the White House very early Thursday, reporters asked the president about claims from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the missile wasn’t Ukrainian. Mr. Biden replied, “That’s not the evidence.”
President Joe Biden talks during a meeting of G7 and NATO leaders in Bali, Indonesia, November 16, 2022.
Doug Mills/AP
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda echoed Mr. Biden’s assessment Wednesday morning, saying it was most likely a Ukrainian missile that fell just inside Polish territory, near the Ukraine border, by accident. He said it did not appear to have been an “intentional attack” by Russia.
The Polish president repeated his remarks from the previous day, saying that he and his allies were “acting with calm” because “this is a difficult situation.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin agreed, telling reporters at a briefing Wednesday, “We have seen nothing that contradicts President Duda’s preliminary assessment that this explosion was most likely the result of a Ukrainian air defense missile that unfortunately landed in Poland.” Like other western leaders, Austin also said that “Russia bears ultimate responsibility for this incident.”
The Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine called on social media for a “joint study” of the incident. He said Ukraine was expecting to be able to review the evidence for any conclusion that the missile that landed in Poland was Ukrainian air defense, and asked for Ukrainian officials to be given access to the site.
Виступаємо за спільне вивчення інциденту з падінням ракети в Польщі. Готові передати наявні у нас докази російського сліду. Очікуємо від партнерів інформацію, на підставі якої був зроблений висновок про те, що йдеться про ракету української ППО.
Zelenskyy said later Wednesday that he believed reports he had received from Ukraine’s air force that the missile was not Ukrainian. He also called for Ukraine to be allowed to visit the site in Poland.
“I have no doubt in the air force’s report that it was not our rocket, and it was not our missile strike. I have no reason not to trust them. I went through the war with them,” Zelenskyy said in a press conference. “Do we have the right to be in the investigation team? Of course.”
Polish investigators were hard at work in the missile crater earlier on Wednesday and had established a police cordon a few yards away, BBC News’ Dan Johnson reported from the scene. Residents of the area, which is only about 10 miles from the Ukrainian border, have been nervous that the war could spill over into their community since Russian leader Vladimir Putin launched his invasion on February 24, Johnson noted.
W #Przewodów, gdzie doszło do wybuchu policjanci od początku zdarzenia zabezpieczają teren. Policyjni eksperci m. in. z @CBSPolicji, #CLKP, Biura Kryminalnego @PolskaPolicja wspólnie z innymi służbami szczegółowo wyjaśniają okoliczności zdarzenia i zabezpieczają dowody. pic.twitter.com/ohBP0rT4u7
Russia fired more than 90 missiles and drones at Ukrainian towns and cities on Tuesday, plunging ten million households into darkness, the Ukrainian government said. It was the largest single missile barrage Russia has launched during the war.
“This is a Russian missile attack on collective security,” Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky said. “This is a very significant escalation. We must act.”
The Kremlin denied responsibility for the missile landing in Poland and called the response of European leaders “hysterical,” while noting the “restrained and much more professional” U.S. reaction.
Police officers stand at a blockade after an explosion in Przewodow, a village in eastern Poland near the border with Ukraine, November 16, 2022.
KACPER PEMPEL / REUTERS
While urging a thorough investigation, Western leaders, including German Chancellor Olaf Sholz and U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, said Russia bore ultimate responsibility for the missile landing in Poland.
“This wouldn’t have happened without the Russian war against Ukraine, without the missiles that are now being fired at Ukrainian infrastructure intensively and on a large scale,” Scholz said.
“This is the cruel and unrelenting reality of Putin’s war,” Sunak said.
CBS News correspondent Chris Livesay contributed to this report.
NATO’s secretary general said there was “no indication” that a missile that landed in Poland was the result of a deliberate attack by Russia. Poland’s president said it was “highly probable” it was fired from Ukrainian air defenses. Charlie D’Agata reports.
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NATO’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that there was “no indication” that a missile that landed inside Poland, killing two people on Tuesday, was a deliberate attack by Russia. Chris Livesay has more.
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The leaders of Poland and NATO said the missile that killed two people in Polish territory on Tuesday was likely fired by Ukrainian forces defending their country against a barrage of Russian strikes, and that the incident appeared to be an accident.
The blast occurred outside the village outside the rural eastern Polish village of Przewodow, about four miles (6.4 kilometers) west from the Ukrainian border on Tuesday afternoon, roughly the same time as Russia launched its biggest wave of missile attacks on Ukrainian cities in more than a month.
On Wednesday, Polish President Andrzej Duda told a press conference that there was a “high chance” it was an air defense missile from the Ukrainian side and likely had fallen in Poland in “an accident” while intercepting incoming Russian missiles.
“There is no indication that this was an intentional attack on Poland. Most likely, it was a Russian-made S-300 rocket,” Duda said in a tweet earlier Wednesday.
Both Russian and Ukrainian forces have used Russian-made munitions during the conflict, including the S-300 surface-to-air missile system, which Kyiv has deployed as part of its air defenses.
The incident in Poland, a NATO country, prompted ambassadors from the US-led military alliance to hold an emergency meeting in Brussels Wednesday.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg too said there was no indication the incident was the result of a deliberate attack by either side, and that Ukrainian forces were not to blame for defending their country from Russia’s assault.
“Our preliminary analysis suggests that the incident was likely caused by the Ukrainian air defense missile fired to defend Ukrainian territory against Russian cruise missile attacks,” Stoltenberg said. “But let me be clear, this is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears ultimate responsibility, as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine.”
Stoltenberg also said there were no signs that Russia was planning to attack NATO countries, in comments that appeared to be intended to defuse escalating tensions.
News of the incident overnight led to a flurry of activity thousands of miles away in Indonesia, where US President Joe Biden convened an emergency meeting with some world leaders to discuss the matter on the sidelines of the G20 summit.
A joint statement following the emergency meeting at the G20 was deliberately ambiguous when it came to the incident, putting far more focus on the dozens of strikes that happened in the hours before the missile crossed into Poland.
Duda and Stoltenberg’s comments tally with those of two officials briefed on initial US assessments, who told CNN it appeared the missile was Russian-made and originated in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian military told the US and allies that it attempted to intercept a Russian missile in that timeframe and near the location of the Poland missile strike, a US official told CNN. It’s not clear that this air defense missile is the same missile that struck Poland, but this information has informed the ongoing US assessment of the strike.
The National Security Council said that the US has “full confidence” in the Polish investigation into the blast and that the “party ultimately responsible” for the incident is Russia for its ongoing invasion.
Investigations at the site where the missile landed will continue to be a joint operation with the US, Polish President Duda said Wednesday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for Ukrainian experts to be allowed to the site.
Zelensky said Wednesday he did not believe that the missile was launched by his forces, and called for Ukrainian experts to play a part in the investigation. “I have no doubt that it was not our missile,” he told reporters in Kyiv.
Earlier Wednesday, a Zelensky adviser said the incident was a result of Russia’s aggression but did not explicitly deny reports that the missile could have been launched by the Ukrainian side.
“Russia has turned the eastern part of the European continent into an unpredictable battlefield. Intent, means of execution, risks, escalation – it is all coming from Russia alone,” Mykhailo Podolyak said in a statement to CNN.
A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Air Force said on national television Wednesday that the military would “do everything” to facilitate the Polish investigation.
Earlier, Biden said that preliminary information suggested it was unlikely the missile that landed in Poland was fired from Russia, after consulting with allies at the G20 Summit in Bali.
“I don’t want to say that [it was fired from Russia] until we completely investigate,” Biden went on. “It’s unlikely in the minds of the trajectory that it was fired from Russia. But we’ll see.”
Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that Russia doesn’t have “any relation” with the missile incident in Poland, and that some leaders have made statements without understanding “what actually happened.”
“The Poles had every opportunity to immediately report that they were talking about the wreckage of the S-300 air defense system missile. And, accordingly, all experts would have understood that this could not be a missile that had any relation with the Russian Armed Forces,” Peskov said during a regular call with journalists.
“We have witnessed another hysterical frenzied Russophobic reaction, which was not based on any real evidence. High-ranking leaders of different countries made statements without any idea about what actually happened.”
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told CNN that NATO allies must “keep a cool head” in light of the incident.
“I think we really have to keep a cool head, knowing there might be a spillover effect, especially to those countries that are very close [to Ukraine],” Kallas told CNN’s Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour in an interview Wednesday.
The incident comes after Russia unleashed a barrage of 85 missiles on Ukraine Tuesday, predominantly targeting energy infrastructure. The bombardment caused city blackouts and knocked out power to 10 million people nationwide. Power has since been restored to eight million consumers, Zelensky later confirmed.
Ukrainians across the country were expected to face further scheduled and unscheduled power cuts Wednesday.
Members of the police searching the fields near the village of Przewodow in Poland on November 16, 2022. Two people were killed on Tuesday in an explosion at a farm near the village in south-eastern Poland that lies about six kilometers inside the country’s border with Ukraine.
Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
NATO said there was no indication that the missile strike that hit a Polish border village on Tuesday night was deliberate, saying that Russia was ultimately to blame as it continues to bombard Ukraine with missiles.
The military alliance’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, said the missile incident took place “as Russia launched a massive wave of rocket attacks across Ukraine.”
While the investigation was ongoing into the incident, he said, “there was no indication this was the result of a deliberate attack” and no indication it was a result of “offensive military actions against NATO.”
Preliminary analysis, as previously reported, suggests the incident was caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile fired to intercept a Russian missile.
“Let me be clear, this is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears the ultimate responsibility as it continues its war against Ukraine,” he said.
The comments come after the alliance’s North Atlantic Council held an emergency meeting following the missile strike that hit Poland on Tuesday night, killing two civilians.
Early Wednesday morning, The Associated Press reported, citing three unnamed U.S. officials, that preliminary assessments indicated “the missile that struck Poland had been fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian missile.”
Other media agencies, including NBC News, cited similar details on Wednesday; Reuters reported a NATO source as saying President Joe Biden had told the G-7 and NATO partners that the strike was caused by “a Ukrainian air defense missile,” while The Wall Street Journal cited two senior Western officials briefed on the preliminary U.S. assessments as saying the missile was from a Ukrainian air defense system.
Those assessments came after Biden said Tuesday that it was “unlikely” the missile was fired from Russia, citing the trajectory of the rocket. President Andrzej Duda of Poland said Wednesday that there was no indication that this was an intentional attack on Poland.
“There are many indications that it was an air defense missile, which unfortunately fell on Polish territory,” Duda said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky makes a surprise visit to Kherson on November 14, 2022 in Kherson, Ukraine.
Paula Bronstein | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Ukraine’s defense ministry responded cautiously to reports suggesting its own armed forces fired a missile that hit Poland, killing two people,saying the issue was “very sensitive” as more details emerge about the incident.
Early Wednesday morning, the Associated Press reported, citing three unnamed U.S. officials, that preliminary assessments indicated “the missile that struck Poland had been fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian missile.”
Other media agencies cited similar details on Wednesday with Reuters reporting a NATO source saying President Joe Biden had told the G-7 and NATO partners that the strike was caused by “a Ukrainian air defense missile,” while the Wall Street Journal cited two senior Western officials briefed on the preliminary U.S. assessments as saying the missile was from a Ukrainian air-defense system.
Ukraine’s ministry was cautious about that initial assessment as investigations continued and NATO prepared to meet in an emergency session in Brussels on Wednesday.
Late Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden said it’s “unlikely” the missile that killed two people in Poland was fired from Russia, citing the trajectory of the rocket. President Andrzej Duda of Poland said Tuesday night that his government didn’t yet conclusively know who fired a missile that struck Polish territory.
Yuriy Sak, an advisor to Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, told CNBC that Kyiv welcomed a thorough investigation of the incident, but said the issue was “very sensitive.”
“It is too early to give any definitive answers and it’s very dangerous to jump to any conclusions,” Sak said Wednesday morning.
“I would like to just stress once again that right now, the president of Poland has said that there are no conclusive evidence of what exactly has happened. [U.S. President] Joe Biden, when he was making his comment, he was also cautious because everybody understands that this is a very sensitive issue,” he said.
“Before any conclusions are made, an investigation must be done. So, that is where we stand,” he said.
Police run a check point outside the scene in Przewodow, Poland, where authorities in Warsaw say a Russian-made missile struck its territory, killing two civilians.
Omar Marques | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Tuesday night’s incident came after Ukraine suffered a wave of missile strikes by Russia with one Ukrainian official saying over 90 missiles were fired at the country. The attacks knocked out energy infrastructure across Ukraine, reportedly leaving 7 million people without power.
For its part, Ukraine blamed Russia for the missile that hit Poland last night, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reportedly telling his Polish counterpart that it was “a rocket launched from the territory of the Russian Federation.” Russia said it had not fired the missile and called it a “deliberate provocation in order to escalate the situation.”
Ukrainian defense official Yuriy Sak told CNBC that Ukraine’s international allies should have responded to Kyiv’s repeated requests for them to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
NATO refused to do that early in the war, fearing it would be dragged into a direct conflict with nuclear power Russia.
“What we want to stress is that if there was no invasion of Ukraine, yesterday would not have happened. If the Ukrainian sky would have been closed at our request by our allies, this would not have happened,” Sak said, echoing comments by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak who said Wednesday morning that “none of this would be happening if it wasn’t for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
Sak said it was crucial that the missile incident didn’t distract from Ukraine’s defense needs.
“It is very important that we don’t shift the focus now and that we continue to discuss the options for further closing the Ukrainian sky, providing Ukraine with efficient air defense systems, because what needs to happen is that we need to all collectively make sure that such tragic incidents as yesterday do not happen again,” he said.
World leaders hold an emergency meeting in Bali to discuss the explosion on Polish territory. Shown are U.S. President Joe Biden (C), U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Japan Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Netherlands’ Prime Minister Mark Rutte and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken
Ludovic Marin | AFP | Getty Images
As a flurry of urgent and high-level diplomatic talks are taking place among NATO members on Wednesday, defense analysts suggested that, whether Russia fired the missile or not, it bears a lot responsibility for the attack.
“Russia is to some degree culpable regardless, because it’s firing missiles on civilian infrastructure targets, and firing them dangerously close to NATO territory and the Ukrainian-Polish border, and Ukraine needs to defend itself,” Samuel Ramani, a geopolitical analyst and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute defense think tank, told CNBC Wednesday.
“But it may not be that Russia intentionally targeted Poland, and it could be Ukraine doing it. So right now, I think we need an investigation to figure out what’s really happening.”
President Joe Biden of the United States arrives at the formal welcome ceremony to mark the beginning of the G20 Summit on November 15, 2022 in Nusa Dua, Indonesia.
Leon Neal | Pool | via Reuters
U.S. President Joe Biden said it is unlikely that the missile that hit Poland and killed two people was fired from Russia, but the United States and allies unanimously agreed to support the country’s investigation.
“I’m going to make sure we figure out exactly what happened,” Biden said.
Early Wednesday morning, Polish officials said a “Russian-made missile” landed on its soil, killing two people. It would mark the first time since Russia’s war in Ukraine began in February of this year that a Russian projectile hit NATO territory.
“There is preliminary information that contests that,” Biden said when asked if the missile was fired from Russia. “I don’t want to say until we completely investigate. It is unlikely in the lines of the trajectory that it was fired from Russia, but we’ll see.”
Biden didn’t address whether the missile could have been fired by Russia from Ukraine or elsewhere.
Biden was speaking in Bali, Indonesia where he is attending the Group of 20 summit, a meeting of the world’s largest economies.
Biden has repeatedly said any attack on NATO soil will be considered an attack on all of the alliance members. He spoke with Polish President Andrzej Duda after the explosion offering his full support, according to the White House. He spokes with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in a separate call, the White House said.
Before speaking to reporters, Biden convened a meeting of “like-minded leaders” on the situation. Participants included G-7 members and allies: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Spainish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio and European Council President Charles Michel.
“We’re going to collectively determine our next step as we investigate and proceed,” Biden said. “There was total unanimity among folks at the table.”
Biden said the group also discussed Russia’s recent missile attacks in Ukraine, saying the country’s aggression has been “unconscionable.”
“The moment when the world came together at the G-20 to urge de-escalation, Russia continues to escalate in Ukraine,” Biden said. “While we were meeting there were scores and scores of missile attacks in western Ukraine. We support Ukraine fully in this moment; we have since the start of the conflict.”
Russia’s war in Ukraine has spilled into Poland, a NATO country. Two missiles crossed over the border, killing two people. It is not yet clear whether they were Russian rockets or Ukrainian air defense missiles. Chris Livesay reports.
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