it became clear to American officials examining satellite-based intelligence systems and speaking to their Polish counterparts that the missile, which landed on a Polish farm in the country’s far east, appeared to have been
launched by Ukraine as part of its air defense systems.
Around an hour after the news broke of the incident, Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address that “
Russian missiles hit Poland,” calling it “a very significant escalation” that required a response.
Sullivan quickly called Zelensky’s office after those remarks, and urged officials to tread more carefully with how they were speaking about the incident, sources familiar with the call said
. Biden and Zelensky did not speak on Tuesday night, despite requests by the Ukrainian leader to arrange a call,
But the incident has also created some cracks in the Wests’s alliance with Ukraine.
Biden and Duda have now both said publicly that the missile appeared to have originated with Ukraine's air defense system—a claim Zelensky has continued to adamantly deny, which has frustrated Polish officials, sources said.
And although Biden spoke with Duda and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in the aftermath of the strike, and held emergency talks with world leaders at the G20,
the president had still not spoken directly with Zelensky by Wednesday afternoon,
Instead, Sullivan spoke to Zelensky’s chief of staff in the hours after the explosion, the sources said, and
Blinken spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba.
By Wednesday, multiple senior US officials were saying publicly that intelligence pointed to the explosion coming from a Ukrainian air defense missile that landed in Poland accidentally. The US had also shared the classified information with allies before Wednesday morning’s North Atlantic Council meeting at NATO headquarters, an official said.
The initial assessment is that the Ukrainian air defense missile tried to intercept a Russian missile but missed and landed in Poland, multiple US and NATO officials said.
On Thursday,
Zelensky confirmed that Ukrainian investigators will be permitted to access to the site of the strike and acknowledged that Ukraine did fire an air defense missile.
“I don’t know what happened. We don’t know for sure. The world does not know.
But I am sure that it was a Russian missile.