Breaking News: Russia-Ukraine conflict escalates as Polish town struck by missile

Earlier this afternoon, two missiles struck Przewodów, a small Polish town near the Ukrainian border killing two people. The missile is suspected of having been fired from Russia however this is an accusation Russia strongly denied. Poland is a member of NATO, a defence alliance made up of 30 countries.

23:13 Currently, the Polish government leaders are holding an emergency security meeting, the results of this are to be expected to be announced in the next 10 minutes. President Zelenskyy of Ukraine has released a statement saying how he has been warning the rest of the world that this conflict would not be contained for months and this is a deliberate escalation. Many NATO nations leaders have reached out to the Polish prime minister, offering their support, however, some nations have been guarded with their wording and referring to the incident as an explosion rather than a strike. At this time, it is suggested that Poland will invoke NATO Article Four. This is when One country feels threatened, they can request consultations from other allies. It does not seem that NATO Article Five will be invoked currently. Article Five stipulates that an attack against one NATO country is an attack against them all. This article needs to be invoked by all 30 NATO member states and will only be done when a war is certain. A meeting of the NATO leaders has been called for Wednesday, at the request of the Polish prime minister. Article The concerns are growing among the leaders, however, at this moment, they are all proceeding with caution, and until more information comes to light, the party line is that a NATO-Russia war is at this moment, very unlikely. More to come after the conclusions of the Polish security meeting.

23:30 The full conclusions from the security meetings haven’t been announced yet, however, it has now been confirmed that at least one of the missiles was Russian-made.

00:00 A statement issued by the Polish foreign ministry, says that the Russian ambassador to Poland has been summoned to give a detailed explanation of the events in question. The spokesperson from the foreign ministry did not say who Poland believed to be at fault for this strike, he did however emphasise that both sides of the conflict have used Russian made missiles, and they are still in the fact finding stage of the investigation. In the last few minutes, the Polish President said that he believes this incident to be one-off and he thinks its unlikely that it will happen again, however they will be triggering Article Four tomorrow.

00:10 The British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is currently attending the G20 summit in Bali, has reiterated his support for the Polish government and people after this explosion and says he is in close co-ordination with NATO allies and he is continuing to keep an eye on the situation.

00:24 The Latvian Deputy Prime Minister has also shown his support for Poland, however he described this as direct escalation by the Kremlin and he condemns the attack. More hard and decisive wording than most world leaders so far.

00:45 A draft statement from the G20 leaders summit has been revealed, demanding that Russia completely withdraws all troops from Ukraine, and expressly condemns any and all possible nuclear weapon usage.

00:50 At this moment it does not seem that any more definitive facts will come out about this situation until tomorrow when the emergency NATO summit will take place, so live updates will be paused until the morning when they will resume as new information is revealed.

16th November 2022

09:31 UK Prime Minister Rishi Suank has held a press at the G20 leaders summit in Bali, expressing his unequivocal support for Ukraine in this conflict, and again emphasised that the UK will stand by Poland and their people at this time. He also declared that, none of this would have happened if it wasn’t for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and this is “the cruel and unrelenting reality of Putin’s war.”

11:46 Andrzej Duda, President of Poland has released a tweet saying the missile blast was an “unfortunate accident” and that there’s “ no proof it was a missile fired by the Russian side”. The Polish PM is now saying it may be unnecessary to invoke NATO Article Four but that they’re still analysing the possibility.