NATO holds emergency meeting on Poland blast, discusses air defence

NATO ambassadors held an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss a missile that hit Poland close to the Ukrainian border, with at least two alliance members calling for steps to strengthen air defence on the military alliance's eastern wing. After the missile that landed on a grains facility in Poland on Tuesday initially raised global alarm that the Ukraine war could spill into neighbouring countries, U.S. President Joe Biden said it was probably not fired from Russia.

In the early hours of Wednesday, Poland said it would likely invoke NATO's Article 4, which is a formal call for consultations among allies in the face of a security threat. It was unclear whether that would still be the case, after a source said Biden told G7 and NATO partners that the missile blast was caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile. The emergency NATO ambassadors' meeting was in any case likely to discuss air defence, Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger said.

It is natural that there will likely be a request on the table to strengthen the airspace of countries on the border," he said. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said NATO should swiftly deploy more air defences on the Polish-Ukrainian border and the rest of the alliance's eastern flank. "I hope by next year's NATO summit in Vilnius we will be able to make progress, as the situation confirms it is the right decision and needs swift implementation", Nauseda said. Ground-based air defence systems such as Raytheon's (RTX.N) Patriot units are in short supply in many Western nations, which were reluctant to invest too much money in military capabilities like these after the end of the Cold War. The Brussels gathering was chaired by Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who will hold a news conference around 1230 CET, NATO said. Russia said it had nothing to do with the blast. If it were to be determined that Moscow was to blame for the blast, it could trigger NATO's principle of collective defence known as Article 5, in which an attack on one of the Western alliance's members is deemed an attack on all, starting deliberations on a potential military response. The article 4 could be an intermediate step, providing for consultations on what to do next. The explosion near the Ukrainian border came as Russia unleashed a wave of missiles targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure, attacks that Kyiv said were the heaviest in nearly nine months of war.

(Source Reuters)