Western support for the Zelensky government is showing signs of strain, with Kiev’s stubborn insistence that the S-300 air defense missile which fell on the village of Przewodow, southeastern Poland was Russian despite evidence to the contrary adding insult to injury.
“This is getting ridiculous. The Ukrainians are destroying confidence in them. Nobody is blaming Ukraine and they are openly lying. This is more destructive than the missile,” an unnamed diplomat from a NATO country told British media after Ukraine’s president reiterated that Moscow was responsible for the incident.
“I have no doubt from the evening report to me personally – from the commander of the air force to commander-in-chief [Valerii] Zaluzhny – that it was not our missile or our missile strike,” Zelensky said Wednesday night. “It makes no sense for me not to trust them,” he stressed.
Zelensky also demanded that Poland give Ukrainian investigators access to the crash site, saying he couldn’t simply take Warsaw’s word for its conclusions. “If, God forbid, some debris killed these people, we have to apologize. But, sorry, first an investigation, access, the data you have – we want to have this.”
Moment of Truth
Even publicly, top Western officials, perhaps cognizant of the dangers of ramping up tensions with Moscow to DEFCON 2, have shown a surprising amount of skepticism toward Kiev’s version of events.
“There is preliminary information that contests that,” President Joe Biden told reporters on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Indonesia on Wednesday after being asked if the missile that struck Przewodow was Russian. “I don’t want to say that until we completely investigate. But it is unlikely in the lines of its trajectory that it was fired from Russia,” Biden added.
Not bad for a president who has gone along with Kiev on virtually all of its claims, from the false flag Bucha massacre to the terror attack against the Crimean Bridge.
Even Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, ordinarily an ardent anti-Russia hawk, challenged Kiev’s version of events on the missile incident after initially pointing the finger at Moscow.
“Ukraine’s defense was launching their missiles in various directions, and it is highly probable that one of these missiles unfortunately fell on Polish territory,” Duda said Wednesday.
16 November 2022, 19:33 GMT
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, another member of the ‘blame Russia first and ask questions later’ crowd, similarly admitted that that the deadly incident at Przewodow was not caused by Russia, but tried to spin the story against Moscow anyway.
“Our preliminary analysis suggests that the incident was likely caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile fired to defend Ukrainian territory against Russian cruise missile attacks. But let me be clear, this is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears ultimate responsibility as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said.
Among NATO’s European allies, Germany and Hungary called for calm, and for a serious investigation to be carried out before any fingerpointing. “In such a serious matter, there must not be any hasty conclusions about the course of events before [a] careful investigation,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Wednesday.
“In the current situation, the most important thing is to remain calm,” Hungarian Defense Minister Kristof Szalay-Bobrovniczky recommended Tuesday after convening his country’s Defense Council. “We are also urging ourselves to be very careful not to draw any far-reaching conclusions from this assessment at this time,” he said.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his Canadian counterpart Justin Trudeau echoed Stoltenberg’s ‘Russia’s not to blame…but it is anyway’ approach, calling for a “full investigation” but stressing that “whatever the outcome of that investigation, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is squarely to blame for the ongoing violence.”
Lesser allies made similarly provocative claims, with Estonia’s foreign ministry expressing readiness to “defend every inch of NATO territory,” but Prime Minister Kaja Kallas ‘clarifying’ that “obviously, if the missile that hit Poland was Ukrainian, then it’s clear that it was not an attack on Poland.”
Hawks Attack
In Washington, Democratic Senate Foreign Relations chairman Bob Menendez led the charge among hawks apparently seeking to drag the US into an open war with Russia, suggesting that the NATO Charter’s article on collective defense could be triggered if the missile strike was a deliberate provocation.
“I hope that the Russians apologize quickly for the loss of life and express that it wasn’t intentional. Obviously, if it was intentional, that has all kinds of consequences to it,” Menendez said, before even any preliminary probe results could be published. “It’s definitely an enlargement of the conflict and of course it brings into question Article 5,” he said.
Chris Coons, another top Senate Democrat, demanded that Russia “recognize this was a tragic mistake,” “apologize for it and offer compensation” to the Poles.
The cooler, calmer and collected response from the White House was appreciated by the Kremlin, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov lauding Biden’s “restrained…professional reaction” compared to the “hysterical, frenzied, Russophobic” responses uttered by others after Tuesday’s incident.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported Tuesday that none of its strikes that day hit within 35 km of the Ukrainian-Polish border.
‘Absolute Maniac’ Zelensky
Online, reactions were less restrained, with commentators racking up tens of thousands of likes and retweets slamming Zelensky as an “absolute maniac” attempting to pull the West into a world-ending conflagration with Russia.
“The missile attack killing two innocent people in Poland was likely from Ukrainian Air Defense. We must stop letting Zelensky demand money and weapons from US taxpayers while he is trying to drag us into WW3. No more money to Ukraine. It’s time to end this war and demand peace,” recently reelected MAGA Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted.
“Did Ukraine Try to Lie Us Into WWIII?” former Texas Congressman Ron Paul tweeted, linking to his institute’s Rumble story.
“Remember yesterday when a Ukrainian missile hit Poland and Zelensky immediately blamed Russia and used the incident to try to pull Western governments into a global nuclear war?” commentator Matt Walsh quipped. “Stop supporting this lunatic,” Kim Dotcom chimed in, listing off some of the inflammatory calls to action against Russia by Kiev over the past 48 hours.