Source : The EurAsian Times
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Poland has triggered Article 4 of The North Atlantic Treaty to convene its NATO allies for consultations on possible threats to its sovereignty and territorial integrity after missiles, presumably fired from the Ukraine conflict zone, fell on its territory, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Wednesday.
“My counterpart, [Polish Foreign Minister] Zbigniew Rau, said that Poland initiated a meeting of the NATO Council under Article 4 of The North Atlantic Treaty. This clause of the alliance’s main treaty states that if any member state feels a threat to its territorial integrity and sovereignty, it can initiate consultations with other member states within NATO,” Szijjarto said in a video statement posted on social media.
Warsaw is still unsure to which country the missiles belonged, Szijjarto added.
“Just in case, our Polish colleagues are conducting a thorough investigation; this investigation is being carried out at the site of the missile fall. And if this investigation has results that are worth disseminating, they will inform us,” Szijjarto said.
On Tuesday, Polish media reported that two missiles fell on Polish territory on the border with Ukraine, killing two people. The Polish foreign ministry said that the missiles were Russian-made. Polish President Andrzej Duda noted that Warsaw did not have accurate information as to which country owned the missiles.
The Russian defense ministry said no strikes had been carried out on targets near the Ukrainian-Polish border and the debris in photos released on the internet looked nothing like Russian weapons. The ministry also said that the Polish media’s emphasis on the fact that the missiles were Russian-made was a deliberate provocation aimed at escalating the situation.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba had a phone call with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday in which he called for a “tough and principled” response to the incident after missiles presumably fired from the Ukraine conflict zone fell in Poland.
“A detailed conversation [took place] with Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding the Russian missile terror — about its scale, purpose and consequences. I emphasized that the response to what happened in Poland must be tough and principled. Grateful for the confirmation that the United States will redouble efforts to restore our energy system together with the G7 and the European Union,” Kuleba said in a statement released by the Ukrainian foreign ministry.
Earlier, Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said that country’s energy system was subjected to the most massive missile attack since the beginning of the Russian military operation in late February,
On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine had registered 85 Russian missile strikes on that day, with most of them hitting energy infrastructure objects.
“This is the most massive shelling of the energy system since the beginning of the war. This attack can affect not only the energy system of Ukraine but also the energy systems of some of our neighbors,” Galushchenko said on social media late on Tuesday.
He noted that the shelling affected the entire energy system, and therefore, emergency shutdowns were introduced in a number of cities in the country.
Zelenskyy said on November 1 that about 40% of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure had been damaged as a result of Russia’s strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure that began on October 10 in response to the bombing attack on the Crimean bridge. Ukraine has introduced rolling blackouts to repair the energy grid ahead of winter.
