ANKARA, November 16. /TASS/. Russia is uninvolved in the incident of a missile falling on Polish soil, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday.
"I have to respect the position of Russia, which has said that it is not its missile. This is important for us," Erdogan said, replying to a question from TASS, following the results of his participation in the G20 summit on the Indonesian island of Bali.
The Turkish leader also called for a detailed probe into the incident.
Erdogan pointed to what he felt were important statements by US President Joe Biden, who noted that the missiles, which had landed on Polish soil, were not Russian-made.
"[German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz has said they are in touch with each other as six NATO countries are. There has also been Biden’s statement. I believe that insisting that the missiles were Russian-made will exacerbate this issue. We are trying to bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table as soon as possible. In this regard, we believe that such a method as provocations is not the right one. The path to peace lies through dialogue," the Turkish leader insisted.
A missile crashed in the village of Przewodow in eastern Poland’s Lublin Voivodeship close to the border with Ukraine late Tuesday, killing two people. Polish President Andrzej Duda said that there was no evidence so far as to who had fired the missile. The Polish Foreign Ministry earlier claimed that the missile was allegedly a Russian-manufactured one.
Meanwhile, US President Biden said that the available preliminary information contested the claims that the missile falling in Poland was launched from Russia. As the US leader said, "It is unlikely in the lines of the trajectory that it was fired from Russia."
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that Russian troops delivered no strikes against targets close to the Ukrainian-Polish border. As the ministry stressed, the photos of fragments posted by Polish media outlets from the scene of the incident had nothing to do with Russian firepower.