Biden has also offered Polish President Andrzej Duda full American support in Poland’s investigation of the incident, the White House said according to Reuters. In a statement, NATO and the G7 countries also state that they are offering their support, after a hastily convened meeting between world leaders who are in Bali to participate in the ongoing G20 meeting.
According to diplomatic sources, NATO’s ambassadors, at the request of Poland, will also gather for a meeting to discuss Article 4 – which becomes relevant when a member state is threatened and when the other members of the alliance must be able to act together.
Poland increases military preparedness
According to Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the robot must have been manufactured in Russia, and the Russian ambassador has been summoned to discuss the information. At the same time, President Duda says that they do not yet have any conclusive evidence about who fired the robot. Nor have they found any indications that the event will repeat itself.
Nevertheless, the country raises the military readiness.
– I want to inform that we will increase the combat capacity of the units in our country, said Piotr Müller, the spokesperson of the Polish government, during a press conference, Reuters reports.
It has also been decided to expand the monitoring of the country’s airspace, according to Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
Russia denies
The Russian Ministry of Defense describes the attack on Poland as a “deliberate provocation intended to escalate the situation” and denies that the robot was fired from Russia, reports Reuters. In a statement, the ministry writes: “No attacks on the Polish-Ukrainian border have been made with Russian weapons.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claims the opposite and calls it a “significant escalation” of the conflict.
– This is a Russian robot attack on our common security. This is a significant escalation. We must act, he said in a statement late Tuesday night without being able to present any evidence that Russia was behind the attack.
American government sources tell AP that there is information indicating that the robot should have been fired by Ukraine instead, to shoot down a Russian robot.