BROADCASTS.com

Nato member Poland and the head of the military alliance both say a missile strike in Polish farmland that killed two people on Tuesday (yesterday NZ time) did not appear to be an intentional attack, and that air defences in neighbouring Ukraine likely launched the Soviet-era projectile against a Russian bombardment that savaged the Ukrainian power grid.

\u201cUkraine\u2019s defence was launching their missiles in various directions and it is highly probable that one of these missiles unfortunately fell on Polish territory,\u201d said Polish President Andrzej Duda.

\u201cThere is nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest that it was an intentional attack on Poland.\u201d

Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, at a meeting of the 30-nation military alliance in Brussels, echoed the preliminary Polish findings, saying: \u201cWe have no indication that this was the result of a deliberate attack.\u201d

The initial assessments of the deadly missile landing appeared to dial back the likelihood of the strike triggering another major escalation in the nearly nine-month-old Russian invasion of Ukraine. If Russia had deliberately targeted Poland, that could have risked drawing Nato into the conflict.

Still, Stoltenberg and others laid overall but not specific blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s war.

\u201cThis is not Ukraine\u2019s fault. Russia bears ultimate responsibility,\u201d Stoltenberg said.

Before the Polish and Nato assessments,\xa0US President Joe Biden had said it was \u201cunlikely\u201d that Russia fired the missile\xa0but added: \u201cI\u2019m going to make sure we find out exactly what happened.\u201d

Three US officials said preliminary assessments suggested it was fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian one.

That assessment and Biden\u2019s comments at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia contradicted earlier information from a senior US intelligence official who told The Associated Press that Russian missiles crossed into Poland.

Ukraine, once part of the Soviet Union, fields Soviet- and Russian-made weaponry, including air-defence missiles, and has also seized many more Russian weapons while beating back the Kremlin\u2019s invasion forces.

Ukrainian air defences worked furiously against the Russian assault on Tuesday on power generation and transmission facilities, including in Ukraine\u2019s western region that borders Poland. Ukraine\u2019s military said 77 of the more than 90 missiles fired were brought down, along with 11 drones.

Russia said it didn\u2019t launch the missile that landed in Poland.

A Defence Ministry spokesman said no Russian strike on Tuesday was closer than 35km from the Ukraine-Poland border. The Kremlin denounced Poland\u2019s and other countries\u2019 initial response and, in rare praise for a US leader, hailed Biden\u2019s \u201crestrained, much more professional reaction\u201d.

US President Joe Biden, left, and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak attend an emergency meeting of leaders at the G20 summit in Nusa Dua, Indonesia, after a missile landed in Poland near the Ukrainian border yesterday. Photo / AP

\u201cWe have witnessed another hysterical, frenzied, Russo-phobic reaction that was not based on any real data,\u201d Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Still, Ukraine was under countrywide Russian bombardment on Tuesday by barrages of cruise missiles and exploding drones, which clouded the initial picture of what exactly happened in Poland and why.

The Polish president said the projectile was \u201cmost probably\u201d a Russian-made S-300 missile dating from the Soviet era.

\u201cIt was a huge blast, the sound was terrifying,\u201d said Ewa Byra, the primary school director in the eastern village of Przewodow, where the missile struck. She said she knew both men who were killed \u2014 one was the husband of a school employee, the other the father of a former pupil.

Another resident, 24-year-old Kinga Kancir, said the men worked at a grain-drying facility, one as a guard, the other driving tractors.

\u201cIt is very hard to accept,\u201d she said. \u201cNothing was going on and, all of a sudden, there is a world sensation.\u201d

Ukraine said it wants immediate access to the site. Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine\u2019s National Security and Defence Council, advocated on Twitter for a \u201cjoint examination of the incident\u201d.

In Europe, Nato members Germany and the UK laced calls for a thorough investigation with criticism of Moscow.

\u201cThis wouldn\u2019t have happened without the Russian war against Ukraine, without the missiles that are now being fired at Ukrainian infrastructure intensively and on a large scale,\u201d said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: \u201cThis is the cruel and unrelenting reality of Putin\u2019s war.\u201d

Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg during a press conference at the Nato headquarters, in Brussels overnight NZ time. Ambassadors from the 30 Nato nations gathered for emergency talks after Poland said a Russian-made missile fell on its territory, killing two people, and US President Joe Biden and his allies promised support for the investigation into the incident. Photo / AP

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it \u201ca very significant escalation\u201d. On the other end of the spectrum, China called for calm and restraint.

Damage in Ukraine from the aerial assault was extensive and swaths of the country were without power. Zelenskyy said about 10 million people lost electricity but tweeted overnight that 8 million were subsequently reconnected, and repair crews were labouring through the night. Previous Russian strikes had already destroyed an estimated 40 per cent of the country\u2019s energy infrastructure.

Ukraine said the bombardment was the largest on its power grid so far. Pope Francis said it caused him \u201cgreat pain and concern\u201d.

A Washington-based think thank, the Institute for the Study of War, said Ukraine\u2019s downing of so many Russian missiles Tuesday \u201cillustrates the improvement in Ukrainian air defences in the last month,\u201d which are being bolstered with Western-supplied systems.

Sweden said on Wednesday an air defence system with ammunition would form part of its latest and largest package of military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, worth $360 million.

The US has been Ukraine\u2019s largest supporter, providing $18.6 billion in weapons and equipment. US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said flows of US weapons and assistance would continue \u201cthroughout the winter so that Ukraine can continue to consolidate gains and seize the initiative on the battlefield\u201d.

Russian attacks on Tuesday killed at least six civilians and wounded another 17, said a senior official, Kyrylo Tymoshenko. In the Kyiv region, a missile strike killed a 69-year-old woman visiting her husband\u2019s grave at a cemetery, the regional police chief said. In central Kyiv, a woman was killed in one of two residential buildings that were damaged, the mayor said.

The Russian bombardment followed days of euphoria in Ukraine sparked by one of its biggest military successes \u2014 the retaking last week of the southern city of Kherson.

It also affected neighboring Moldova. It reported massive power outages after the strikes in Ukraine disconnected a power line to the small nation.

With its battlefield losses mounting, Russia has increasingly resorted to targeting Ukraine\u2019s power grid, seemingly hoping to turn the approach of winter into a weapon by leaving people in the cold and dark. - VASILISA STEPANENKO, AP

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.