President Joe Biden said Wednesday after meeting allies that they would support Poland in probing “exactly what happened” in a missile strike that hit Polish territory while saying preliminary information shows it was probably not fired “from Russia”.
“It is unlikely… that it was fired from Russia,” Biden told reporters in Bali, where he has been attending a G20 summit, citing the trajectory.
The comments maintained the cautious reaction across Western capitals and from Poland itself, amid concerns that Russia’s nine-month war against pro-Western Ukraine might spill over into NATO territory. Two people were killed in the blast.
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Other than saying the missile apparently did not come from Russian territory, Biden gave no other specifics. Russian forces occupy swaths of Ukrainian territory and are present in Belarus, but are in daily exchanges of missile fire with Ukrainian forces.
Biden spoke after huddling in what the White House called an “emergency roundtable” with leaders of G7 countries and the European Union, all in Bali for the last day of the G20.
“We agreed to support Poland’s investigation into the explosion in rural Poland near the Ukrainian border. And I’m going to make sure we figure out exactly what happened,” Biden said.
“Then we’re going to collectively determine our next step as we investigate and proceed. There was totally unanimity among the folks at the table.”
Biden stressed that Russia has been sending waves of missiles against Ukraine this week while world leaders attended the G20 — with President Vladimir Putin skipping the conference.
The attacks “are continuing the brutality and inhumanity that they have demonstrated throughout this war against Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure. It’s been totally unconscionable what they are doing, totally unconscionable,” Biden said.
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“At the moment when the world had come together at the G20 to urge de-escalation, Russia continues to… escalate in Ukraine, while we are meeting. I mean, there were scores and scores of missile attacks.”
He said Western allies would “continue to do whatever it takes” to support Ukraine’s resistance.