Russia-Ukraine latest developments: Poland missile attack escalates tension – Here are top updates

The intensity of the Russia-Ukraine war got a new twist after a missile landed in eastern Poland killing two Polish citizens. This is the first confirmed instance that the ripple effects of the war caused casualties directly in another country. The circumstances of the explosion shrouded in mystery, not knowing who fired the missile from where amidst the blame game going on. However, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened, calling an emergency meeting to discuss the explosion and possible next steps. Russia denied it fired the missile. Its defence ministry called reports “a deliberate provocation aimed at escalating the situation”, reported Reuters.

Here are 5 developments that dwell on how the Russia-Ukraine war further unfolds 

1. Ukraine said it faced fierce attacks in the east from Russian forces reinforced with troops withdrawn from Kherson in the south, while NATO and Poland concluded a missile that crashed in Poland was probably a stray fired by Ukraine’s air defences. The government in Kyiv was working to restore power across the country on Wednesday after intense Russian strikes on civilian infrastructure earlier in the week, officials quoted by Reuters.

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2. NATO ambassadors held emergency talks on Wednesday to respond to Tuesday’s blast that killed two people at a grain facility in Poland near the Ukrainian border, the war’s first deadly extension into the territory of the Western alliance. “From the information that we and our allies have, it was an S-300 rocket made in the Soviet Union, an old rocket and there is no evidence that it was launched by the Russian side,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said. “It is highly probable that it was fired by Ukrainian anti-aircraft defence.”

3. According to a AP report, Russian strikes hit Ukraine’s southern Odesa region and the city of Dnipro for the first time in weeks on Thursday morning, and air raid sirens sounded all across the country amid fears that Moscow unleashed another large-scale missile attack.An infrastructure target was hit on the Odesa region, Governor Maksym Marchenko said on Telegram, warning about the threat of a “massive missile barrage on the entire territory of Ukraine.”

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4. Multiple explosions were also reported in Dnipro, where two infrastructure objects were damaged and at least one person was wounded, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, told AP. Officials in the Poltava, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi and Rivne regions urged residents to stay in bomb shelters amid the persisting threat of missile strikes. Thursday’s blast follows the huge barrage of Russian strikes on Tuesday, the biggest attack to date on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that also resulted in a missile hitting Poland. Russia has increasingly resorted to targeting Ukraine’s power grid as winter approaches as its battlefield losses mount. 

5. Following the latest wave of missile attacks targeting power infrastructure, Zelenskiy said that technicians had worked nonstop to restore electricity to households.

“We are talking about millions of customers. We are doing everything we can to bring back power. Both generation and supply,” said Zelenskiy quoted by Reuters. Elsewhere, a United Nations source on Wednesday said they have reasons to be “cautiously optimistic” on the renewal of a Black Sea grains export agreement, which is set to roll over on Saturday unless there are objections.

(With agency inputs)