On Tuesday, November 15, a wayward Ukrainian missile hit the village of Przewodowe in eastern Poland, just a few miles from the Poland–Ukraine border, killing two civilians.
In the immediate aftermath of the strike, the Associated Press, citing an anonymous (and, in all likelihood, nonexistent) U.S. official, falsely reported that the missile was fired by Russian Federation forces into Poland. This false claim was disseminated throughout the Western capitalist press.
Naturally, the Russian Federation government immediately and repeatedly denied responsibility for the strike. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on Wednesday, November 16, which read:
[T]he Russian Federation immediately provided comprehensive clarification on Russia’s armed forces not being involved in this incident.
Despite this … the media [in NATO countries], without looking into the situation, scrambled as one to spread absolutely fake and unfounded allegations about Russia potentially being responsible… We see this mayhem as a deliberate effort made as part of a systematic anti-Russia campaign conducted by the West around Ukraine. At the same time, the speed with which accusations against Russia were made by the Kiev regime is notable. Kiev [takes] every opportunity to … consolidate Western support as the Zelensky regime appears to have tired its patrons.
We are confident that an impartial investigation and publication of the results will expose the facts of this provocation.
Remarkably, despite the ongoing inter-imperialist conflict between the Russian Federation and NATO, the two sides actually seem to be in unanimous agreement on this fact: The missile that struck Poland was decidedly not fired by the RF military, and was, in fact, most likely launched by the Ukrainian Air Force. This agreement on the facts is perhaps a first in the ongoing Russia–Ukraine conflict’s eight-year history.
Already by the night of November 15, President Biden stated to reporters, “It is unlikely [given] the trajectory that [the missile] was fired from Russia.” Biden’s statement followed an “emergency” meeting of the G-7 imperialists (the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Britain, plus the European Union) and NATO.NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, of Norway, in an address on Wednesday, November 16, following an emergency meeting of the North Atlantic Council (NATO’s top executive body) stated the following:
We have no indication that this was the result of a deliberate attack. And we have no indication that Russia is preparing offensive military actions against NATO [i.e., Poland and other NATO member-states]. 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.
Stoltenberg, in customary NATO fashion, then proceeded to lay “ultimate blame” for the Ukrainian misfire on the Russian Federation.
For its part, the Polish government immediately forgave Ukraine.
On Wednesday, November 16, President Andrzej Duda of Poland stated in an address, “It is unfortunately highly probable that one of the missiles fired by the Ukrainian air defenses fell in our territory.” He added that the missile appeared to be an old Soviet-era model, and acknowledged that “There is no evidence, at the moment, that it was launched by the Russian side. It is highly probable that it was fired by Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense.”
Later, speaking to reporters, Duda, whose government has been focused on “calming down” the Polish public, emphatically insisted, “Nothing, absolutely nothing, indicates that this was an intentional attack on Poland.”
Meanwhile, the United States, which leads NATO and the whole Western imperialist axis, both politically and economically, immediately acknowledged the findings of NATO’s “preliminary analysis.” Multiple U.S. military officials have conceded that the missile was almost certainly Ukrainian, not Russian, in origin.
Following President Duda’s remarks, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stated that the U.S. government concurs that “this explosion was most likely the result of a Ukrainian air defense missile that unfortunately landed in Poland.” Austin also echoed, however, that the Russian Federation bears “ultimate responsibility” for Ukraine’s misfire.
Citing “Western diplomats,” Reuters reported, that Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has been coaching foreign diplomats from NATO member-states and other U.S.-aligned countries, “asking them to adopt a cautious approach and to be ‘measured’ while the United States worked out how it would respond.” On Wednesday, November 16, the day after the incident, the Associated Press, along with the numerous outlets that had repeated its false report as fact, were forced by NATO’s consensus to issue a correction to its initial report:
In … a story published November 15, 2022, [the AP] reported erroneously, based on information from a senior American intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity, that Russian missiles had crossed into Poland and killed two people. Subsequent reporting showed that the missiles were Russian-made [in fact, the missiles were manufactured in the Soviet Union, and were thus not simply “Russian-made” — a common misconception that has been repeated by many Western media outlets] and most likely fired by Ukraine in defense against a Russian attack.
By the time this correction was issued, however, the damage had been done. The AP’s false report reignited the fervorous jingoism that the Western pro-imperialist press has worked so tirelessly to instill in the North American and European public, with yet another tale of Russian war crimes. Every time public support for NATO’s proxy-war with the Russian Federation wanes, or gives way to the fear of a potential escalation to world war, even by an inch, the Western pro-imperialist press applies another dose of — typically false — pro-war agitation. This formula hasn’t changed in decades; it’s been reapplied to each subsequent American imperialist war of aggression, whether against Iraq and Afghanistan, Vietnam and Cambodia, Korea, Yugoslavia, Haiti, or the greater part of Latin America. The Associated Press wasn’t concerned about their report’s truth. The point, after all, was its effect.
Despite this remarkable international consensus, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the CIA-installed, NATO-backed, puppet-dictator of Ukraine, has continued to insist that the missile was fired by Russian, not Ukrainian, forces.
In a video uploaded on November 16, Zelenskyy stated, “Today happened what we warned of a long time ago… Terror is not limited to our national borders… [T]oday, Russian missiles hit Poland… How many times has Ukraine said that the terrorist state will not be limited to our country?”
Zelenskyy went on to say that “This is a Russian missile attack on [NATO’s] collective security. This is a significant escalation. We must act.”
Zeleneskyy implored the Polish government to invoke Article Five of the North Atlantic Treaty, which allows a NATO member to invoke the principle that “an attack against one is an attack against all,” and thus compel NATO to consider collective military action. Poland, alongside fellow NATO member-states Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, already invoked Article Four of the treaty in February, shortly after the Russian Federation launched its invasion of Ukraine; the fourth article may be invoked when a member-state perceives a military threat, but has not been directly attacked, in order to procure military reinforcements from its NATO allies. This has resulted in a build-up of several thousands of NATO troops along NATO’s “eastern flank.” Now, in no uncertain terms, Zeleneskyy was imploring Poland, as a NATO member-state, to initiate a world war between NATO and Russia — a world war between nuclear-armed powers.
Zelenskyy’s blustering has been repeated by other Ukrainian government officials.
On November 15, Ukraine’s Minister of Defence Oleksii Reznikov tweeted an especially bizarre statement: “Poland. This is not a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is the reality we’ve been warning about. We were asking to close the sky, because [the] sky has no borders. Not for [Russia’s] uncontrolled missiles. Not for the threat they carry for our [EU and NATO] neighbors. Gloves are off. Time to win.”
Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba similarly tweeted on November 15, “Russia now promotes a conspiracy theory that it was allegedly a [Ukrainian missile] that fell on [Poland]. Which is not true. No one should buy Russian propaganda or amplify its messages.” Kuleba’s claim of a “Russian conspiracy theory” was made despite the fact that, by that point, NATO, including Poland itself, had already acknowledged that the missile was fired by Ukrainian forces.
In response to the Ukrainian government’s continued false assertions, the Russian Ministry of Defense reiterated in a statement its assertion that “The statements of various Ukrainian sources and foreign officials on the fall of alleged ‘Russian rockets’ in Przewodów are a deliberate provocation aimed at escalating the situation.” The statement also claimed that “All [destruction] in the residential quarters of [Kiev]” were caused not by Russian missiles, but by “self-destruction of the air defense missiles launched by Ukrainian forces from the foreign-manufactured air defense systems deployed within the [Kiev] city limits.”
At a November 16 meeting of the United Nations Security Council on the “maintenance of peace and security of Ukraine,” the Russian Federation’s Permanent Representative Vasily Nebenzya spoke of “the attempts by Ukraine and Poland to provoke a clash between Russia and NATO. The completely irresponsible statements made by the leaders of these two countries cannot be interpreted any other way,” he said.
Citing Zelenskyy’s false statements (the same statements we quoted above), Nebenzya said, “This is not just an intentional attempt at disinformation, but a conscious attempt to involve NATO, which is conducting a proxy-war with Russia in Ukraine — to [draw NATO] into a direct conflict with our country.”
Nebenzya proceeded to say that, “The Russophobic authorities of Poland … unequivocally stated that they were the target of Russian attacks… And this is in spite of the fact that photos published … leave no doubt that Ukrainian air-defense missiles had crossed into Poland. And now this has been confirmed even by NATO.”
Nebenzya added, “If not for that [evidence], all these facts would be concealed from the [Western] public, in order to promote the [narrative] of Russian guilt.” He cited other instances in which Ukrainian missile misfires have been blamed on the RF military, and reminded the Security Council that the Ukrainian government has imposed laws banning civilians from publishing photo and video evidence of Ukrainian war crimes on social media.
Finally, responding to the claim that the RF bears “ultimate responsibility” for the Ukrainian misfire, Nebenzya said that “We would not find ourselves in this situation if not for the fact that, in 2014 … with the direct participation of a number of Western states, a bloody anti-constitutional coup had not taken place.”
The RF permanent representative referred to the CIA-manufactured Euromaidan coup, which overthrew the previous Ukrainian government. The coup ousted an internationally neutral president, Viktor Yanukovych, and installed a pro-NATO, pro-European Union regime, led by the Zelenskyy government since 2019.
While the leaders of the Western imperialist axis will, of course, not subscribe to the overarching narrative of the Russian Federation government, and while NATO continues to cast “ultimate blame” on the RF for the Ukrainian misfire on Poland, the facts of the incident are now established beyond dispute.
In fact, President Biden has now directly countered Zelenskyy’s claim that the missile was fired by Russian forces.
On Thursday, November 17, when asked by a reporter for his “reaction to President Zelenskyy saying that the missiles that landed in Poland were not Ukrainian,” Biden simply replied, “That’s not the evidence,” before waving and walking away.
Why have NATO and the Russian Federation agreed on the facts?
Why has even the President of the United States, the central, foremost, unrivaled leader and figurehead of the Western imperialist axis, acknowledged the fact that NATO’s great rival, the Russian Federation, did not strike Poland?
For all their imperialist machinations and ambitions, neither the Western imperialist axis nor the Russian Federation stand to benefit from nuclear war. The only possible outcome of such a world war is, as it always has been, mutually assured destruction. Even the most bloodthirsty imperialist is forced to the table of diplomacy by this fact. Both “sides” of the proxy-war in Ukraine have thus taken great pains to ensure that, whatever happens — no matter which “side” gains and loses more, and no matter how much destruction Ukraine suffers in the process — the inter-imperialist conflict remains a proxy-war, that it remains within its prescribed bounds, and that it does not escalate to a world war.
Only President Zelenskyy and the deranged leaders of his military-dictatorship regime have departed from this international consensus. As the war in Ukraine rages on, the Zelenskyy regime grows increasingly desperate for a direct war between NATO and the Russian Federation — no matter the toll. If the war does not end soon, we may well see the Zelenskyy regime resort to even more drastic measures to provoke a world war, and we may well live to see the unimaginably violent collapse of the existing world order.
The Western imperialist axis created and unleashed this monster. Now, the common people of Ukraine, of Russia, and of Europe, especially the working classes and the poor, are suffering for it. If this monster cannot be contained or destroyed, then the rest of the world, the rest of humanity, may lose everything.
