WARSAW, November 17. /TASS/. Poland has decided against invoking Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which stipulates consultations in the event of a threat, following the missile explosion incident, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Wednesday.
"We are essentially holding these consultations. But indeed, there is Article 4 of the defense treaty of Washington that binds the members to hold consultations in the event of a threat. The president and I, as part of the national security committee, made a decision late last night that we would be looking into reasons for invoking Article 4. And if we had them, our ambassador had the opportunity to use it," he said on Polish Television.
"But the course of events and the data that came in overnight have led us to believe it wasn’t a deliberate attack on Poland. According to our information as of this moment, there wasn’t a plan to attack Poland. So, we didn’t invoke Article 4, although we had it at the ready," the prime minister said.
On Tuesday, a missile fell in the village of Przewodow in eastern Poland’s Lublin Voivodeship on the border with Ukraine, killing two people. According to Polish President Andrzej Duda, that was not a deliberate attack on Poland. Warsaw has ascertained that most likely the S-300 missile produced in the 1970s was fired by the Ukrainian air defenses.
The Polish government convened a meeting of the national security committee Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. Warsaw is also holding consultations with NATO, the US and other allies. The country put all services on high alert and stepped up the monitoring of air space.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Moscow did not strike the area near the Ukrainian-Polish border. The ministry said that, judging by the published photos, the debris had nothing to do with Russian munitions.