Russia has not carried out any strikes against targets near the Polish-Ukrainian border, the defense ministry in Moscow said on Tuesday, following reports of a missile striking the village of Przewodow and killing two civilians.
Some western media outlets and politicians have claimed that Russia is responsible for the incident. However, no evidence has been provided to support such assertions.
Missile fragments, photos of which were published by Polish media on the scene, “have nothing to do with Russian weapons,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Statements by Polish media and officials about the alleged ‘Russian’ missiles falling in the area of the village of Przewodow are “a deliberate provocation in order to escalate the situation,” the Russian military added.
Russia targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure in a “massive” missile attack, Kiev announced on Tuesday. The strikes came less than a day after President Vladimir Zelensky set conditions for peace talks with Russia that Moscow called “unrealistic and inadequate.”
Russian forces “launched 85 missile strikes at Ukraine,” Zelensky said in an emergency address on Tuesday evening. His office called the situation in the wake of the attack “critical,” adding that most strikes targeted facilities in the center and north of country.
The situation in Kiev is particularly hard, according to the deputy head of the presidential administration, Kirill Timoshenko. The Ukrainian energy providers had resorted to emergency power cuts to avoid energy system failures, he added.
According to the local authorities, half of Kiev residents and up to 80% of people living in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv were left without electricity in the wake of the strikes.
Up to nine Ukrainian regions were targeted in the attack, according to the authorities.
Ukraine’s neighbor Moldova was also affected by the strike. Disruptions at the Ukrainian power plants led to a power-line disconnection in Moldova, causing “massive power outages across the country,” the nation’s deputy prime minister Andrei Spinu said on Telegram.
At least one person died in the attack in Kiev as a missile shot down by the Ukrainian air defense systems fell on a residential building in the capital, local emergency services confirmed. The Ukrainian Air Force spokesman said that a total of 100 X-101 and X-555 cruise missiles were launched at Ukraine.
Zelensky warned that further attacks could follow and called on people to stay in shelters.
Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushenko called the missile attack the “most massive shelling of [Ukraine’s] energy system since the beginning of the war.” He also confirmed that both Ukraine and “some of our neighbors” were affected.
Poland has convened an emergency meeting of its national security council on Tuesday evening after reports that at least two civilians were killed when one or more missiles struck the village in the Lublin region, just across the border with Ukraine.
While AP reported that Russian missiles had crossed into Poland, citing an unnamed “senior US intelligence official,” the Pentagon declined to corroborate the claim.
“I can tell you that we don’t have any information at this time to corroborate those reports and are looking into this further,” Air Force Brigadier General Patrick Ryder told reporters, when asked about the Przewodow incident.
The Polish government spokesman Piotr Mueller called on the media and the public “not to publish unconfirmed information.”
Officials from the Baltic states blamed Russia and claimed that Poland should invoke NATO’s Article 5 in retaliation. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky accused Russia of “terrorism” and said NATO needed to “act” against this “attack on collective security.”