Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky has stepped out of line in his relationships with his foreign backers, Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, has said. She was referring to his attempt to nudge NATO into retaliating against Russia for a deadly incident in Poland.
“Zelensky sits in a bunker and cannot understand why his version about a ‘Russian missile in Poland’ was dismissed even by the worst of Russophobes,” she wrote on social media on Wednesday. The president, she added, should realize that his job is “to do the dirty work and not tell bosses what they should do.”
The remark came after the incident on Tuesday evening in the village of Przewodow on Poland’s border with Ukraine, in which two local residents were killed. Zelensky rushed to declare it “a Russian missile strike on [NATO] collective security” and urged Western nations to “take action.”
Some sources in Poland initially claimed that two Russian missiles had caused the deaths, while the Polish Foreign Ministry referred to a single projectile, describing it as “Russian-made.”
The incident in Przewodow occurred as Moscow launched a massive barrage of missiles on key energy and military infrastructure in Ukraine. The Russian Defense Ministry denied targeting any sites in the area near the Polish village. The military later stated that images of the debris available publicly clearly identified it as a Ukrainian S-300 interceptor.
NATO members appear to have arrived at the same conclusion, according to reports in Western media. The US-led bloc reportedly tracked the missile’s path from Ukraine. US President Joe Biden told the media that, judging by the trajectory, Russia was unlikely to be responsible.