US President Joe Biden said the missile that hit a rural town in Poland near the Ukrainian border was unlikely to have been fired from Russia, but said a final decision was pending a full investigation into the accident, according to The Hill.
“There is preliminary information that contradicts this. I don’t want to say until we fully investigate. It is very unlikely in the runway’s mind that it was fired from Russia,” Biden told reporters, when asked if the missile is was launched by Russia.
Biden, who is attending the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, spoke to the press after meeting with the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Spain, Japan and the Netherlands. The meeting was also attended by the heads of the European Commission and the European Union.
Hours earlier, a missile had hit a grain silo in a village about 15 miles from the Ukrainian border. Polish authorities said the missile was Russian-made. Russia’s Defense Ministry has denied that missiles were fired near the Ukrainian-Polish border.
Biden spoke with Polish President Andrzej Duda before meeting other allies in Bali.
“We have agreed to support Poland’s investigation into the blast in rural Poland near the Ukrainian border and I will make sure we find out exactly what happened and then we collectively determine our next step as we investigate and follow up,” Biden told reporters after the ” There was complete consensus among the people at the table.”
The United States and other NATO members have widely said they are still gathering information about the incident before deciding how to respond
The attack raised tensions around the western alliance’s common defense mechanism known as Article 5, which states that an attack on any member of NATO “shall be considered an attack on all of them”. It was last used in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
