Rishi Sunak looks stony-faced across room at Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov as the pair clash during G20 summit in Bali (Picture: Sean Kilpatrick/AP)
Russian missiles have killed two people in Poland, a US intelligence source said last night.
Images showed a crater and an overturned trailer loaded with grain in the village of Przewodow, close to the Ukraine border. The accusations emerged as Russia launched one of its biggest missile barrages against Ukraine, targeting cities including Lviv – 43 miles from Poland. Polish ministers were holding an urgent security meeting as UK and European allies said they wanted to establish the facts about the apparent attack on a Nato member.
But Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky said: ‘Terror is not limited to our national borders. Russian missiles hit Poland. To fire missiles at Nato territory – this is a Russian missile attack on collective security.’ If the US reports are confirmed it would be the first time in the war that Moscow’s weapons have come down in a Nato country.
Russia’s barrage of attacks across Ukraine yesterday was described by Kyiv as the heaviest in the nine months since the invasion was launched by president Vladimir Putin.
US Pentagon spokesman Brig Gen Patrick Ryder told a news briefing: ‘We are aware of the press reports alleging that two Russian missiles have struck a location inside Poland near the Ukraine border.
‘We don’t have any information at this time to corroborate those reports and are looking into this further.’
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov faced of with British prime minister Sunak (Picture: Sean Kilpatrick/AP)
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Russia’s defence ministry last night called the reports ‘a deliberate provocation aimed at escalating the situation’.
In a statement, it added: ‘No strikes on targets near the Ukrainian-Polish border were made by Russian means of destruction. The wreckage published by Polish media in the settlement of Przewodow has nothing to do with Russian weapons.’
A former British Army head urged caution while being sceptical about potential Kremlin explanations that the missile spill was a mistake.
Lord Dannatt, chief of the general staff between 2006 and 2009, told Sky News: ‘This is a classic Putin tactic.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky compared liberation in Kherson to D-Day (Picture: EPA)
‘He just wants to know what our response is going to be because what he really wants is to get a fracture in the unanimity of Nato and the West.
‘We need to be very clear in our analysis. We don’t want to rush into a wider war as a result of a miscalculation.’
Mr Zelensky said Russia had fired at least 85 missiles, most of them aimed at his country’s power facilities.
‘We’re working, will restore everything. We will survive every-thing,’ he promised.
Sunak joins leaders’ selfie with Fifa chief Gianni Infantino (Picture: Shutterstock)
However, energy minister Herman Haluschenko described the onslaught as ‘the most massive’ bombardment of power facilities since Putin’s troops invaded Ukraine in February.
It came as Rishi Sunak tore into Russia’s foreign minister and demanded to know where his boss was in a face-to-face clash at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia.
In his first meeting with a Kremlin figure since the invasion, the prime minister glared at Sergei Lavrov and told him ‘countries should not invade their neighbours’. He said Putin – who claimed to be ‘too busy’ to attend the conference – was the ‘one man with the power to change all of this’.
Continuing in frosty tones, he added: ‘It is notable that he didn’t feel able to join us. Maybe if he had, we could get on with sorting things out, because the single biggest difference that anyone could make is for Russia to get out of Ukraine and end this barbaric war.’
Prime minister Rishi Sunak demanded to know why Vladimir Putin failed to show (Picture: PA)
Mr Zelensky addressed the G20 leaders by video from Kyiv, telling them he would not negotiate while Russian troops remained in Ukraine territory.
Pointedly snubbing Russia by referring to the ‘G19’, he compared last week’s victory in Kherson to the D-Day landings in Normandy which turned the tide of World War II.
The liberation of the southern city sparked days of celebrations in Ukraine and allowed families to be reunited for the first time in months.
But Kherson’s remaining 80,000 residents are still without heat, water or electricity, and reports of abuses have emerged since the Russian retreat.
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UN human rights monitor Matilda Bogner has said she would travel to the city to try to verify allegations of nearly 80 cases of enforced disappearances and detention.
Mr Lavrov accused Ukraine of ‘dragging out’ the conflict when he spoke at a press conference later. ‘All problems are with the Ukrainian side. They are categorically refusing negotiations and putting forward conditions that are obviously unrealistic,’ he said.
Mr Sunak also met with India’s leader Narendra Modi and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman for the first time since becoming prime minister, during a series of one-on-ones at the summit.
‘It is notable that he didn’t feel able to join us.’
