Biden casts doubt on Zelensky’s Poland missile claim

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres was among a number of world leaders that welcomed an agreement to extend the Black Sea grain deal on Thursday, after Moscow had threatened to pull out sparking concerns for global food supplies.

European Council President Charles Michel said the agreement was “good news for a world that badly needs access to grain and fertilisers.”

The grain deal was brokered in July by the United Nations and Turkey to allow Ukraine to resume the export of grain and other agricultural products after Russia began a full-scale assault on the country in February. It was due to expire on November 19.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Twitter that the agreement on the extension had been reached after Turkey hosted discussions between the UN, Russia and Ukraine.

Erdogan said that more than 11 million tonnes of grain and other products had been shipped from Ukrainian ports so far under the deal.

The 120-day extension is less than the year-long extension Ukraine says it asked for.

All of the evidence collected by NATO, the United States and Poland indicates that a missile which killed two people in Poland was fired by Ukrainian forces, according to a Polish official.

The evidence “indicates that we are dealing with an S-300 missile launched by Ukrainian air defenses,” said Jacek Severa, the head of Poland’s National Security Bureau, in an interview with Polish RMF FM radio on Thursday.

Two farmers died Tuesday when a missile landed outside the rural eastern Polish village of Przewodow, about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) west of the Ukrainian border.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has insisted the missile was not Ukrainian, and said that Ukrainian experts must be allowed access to the site of the explosion and review all data available to its allies. 

When asked why Zelensky denies it was a Ukrainian missile, Severa replied: “President Zelensky represents a country that is at war. The war that had the hardest time in terms of attacks and the use of air assault.”

“It is normal that under such conditions certain hypotheses that seem obvious from the point of view of the defense of the state also seem obvious to the head of that state,” he added.

Three Russians and a Ukrainian accused of mass murder and tried in absentia for their alleged involvement in the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 are set to receive their verdict from a Dutch court Thursday. 

The Boeing 777 was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014, when it was shot out of the sky over territory held by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.

All 298 people on board were killed in the incident, including 15 crew members and 283 passengers from 17 countries.  

The downing of MH17 happened in the early phase of a conflict between pro-Russia separatists and Ukrainian forces.

An international investigation found that the plane was hit by a Russian Buk missile fired from a village in eastern Ukraine that was held at the time by pro-Russian rebels.

Prosecutors say the launcher belonged to Russia’s 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade and was returned to Russian territory the day after the strike. Moscow has repeatedly denied any responsibility for the incident.

The trial marks the first time that independent judgement will be made on the 2014 incident. 

Three Russians, Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy and Oleg Pulatov, were named as suspects, along with Ukrainian separatist Leonid Kharchenko.

According to investigators, Girkin is a former colonel of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Dubinskiy was employed by Russia’s military intelligence agency GRU and Pulatov was a former soldier of the Russian special forces, Spetsnaz-GRU.

Ukraine’s Kharchenko had no military background, but is believed to have led a combat unit in Donetsk in July 2014.

While the suspects are not accused of firing the missile at MH17, they are “just as punishable as the person who committed the crime,” according to Dutch prosecutor Fred Westerbeke.

The men were tried in absentia at Schiphol Judicial Complex in Badhoevedorp, the Netherlands, and are unlikely to serve time if convicted.

Pulatov was the only suspect to be represented by lawyers and has maintained his innocence throughout. 

Prosecutors have demanded life sentences for the suspects on charges of murder and causing an aircraft to crash. They have presented thousands of pages of evidence to support their case. 

Ukraine is likely to be granted access to the site in Przewodow, Poland, near the Ukrainian border, where a missile killed two people on Tuesday, according to a Polish official.

“A Polish-American investigating team is working at the site of the rocket’s impact,” Jakub Kumoch, top foreign policy advisor to Polish President Andrzej Duda, told Polish broadcaster TVN 24 in an interview on Thursday. If Poland and the United States agree, then the Ukrainians may soon receive access, he said.

The leaders of Poland and NATO have said the missile was likely fired by Ukrainian air defense forces attempting to thwart a barrage of Russian strikes, but that Moscow bore “ultimate responsibility” for having started the war. 

On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has insisted the missile was not Ukrainian, said that Ukrainian experts must be allowed access to the site of the explosion and review all data available to its allies. 

“The Ukrainian position is very transparent: we want to establish all the details, every fact. That is why we need our experts to join the work of the international investigation and to get access to all the data available to our partners and to the site of the explosion,” Zelensky said in his daily video address.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday confirmed all parties had agreed to extend the UN-brokered Black Sea grain deal aimed at easing a global food crisis after Russia had cast doubt on its continued participation in the agreement.

The deal, signed in July, had been due to expire on Saturday.

In a tweet, Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said the deal would be “prolonged for 120 days.”

Some context: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday cast doubt on the future of the agreement, saying it depended on existing terms being met. Earlier this month, Russia rejoined the deal after saying it was pulling out.

Ukraine and Russia together account for nearly a third of global wheat exports and the grain deal has played a crucial role in lowering the price of wheat and other commodities globally.

When world leaders at the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, issued a joint statement condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine, a familiar sentence stood out from the 1,186-page document.

“Today’s era must not be of war,” it said, echoing what Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Russian leader Vladimir Putin during a face-to-face meeting in September.

Media and officials in the country of 1.3 billion were quick to claim the inclusion as a sign that the world’s largest democracy had played a vital role in bridging differences between an increasingly isolated Russia, and the United States and its allies.

“How India united G20 on PM Modi’s idea of peace,” ran a headline in the Times of India, the country’s largest English-language paper.

The declaration came as Indonesian President Joko Widodo handed over the G20 presidency to Modi, who will host the next leaders’ summit in the Indian capital New Delhi in September 2023 — about six months before he is expected to head to the polls in a general election and contest the country’s top seat for a third time.

As New Delhi deftly balances its ties to Russia and the West, Modi, analysts say, is emerging as a leader who has been courted by all sides, winning him support at home, while cementing India as a international power broker.

“The domestic narrative is that the G20 summit is being used as a big banner in Modi’s election campaign to show he’s a great global statesmen,” said Sushant Singh, a senior fellow at New Delhi-based think tank Center for Policy Research. “And the current Indian leadership now sees themselves as a powerful country seated at the high table.”

Read the full analysis here.

Russian shelling and missile strikes continued to target civilian infrastructure overnight, including gas and electricity facilities, according to Ukrainian officials.

Five people were wounded after Russia shelled the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday morning, Valentyn Reznichenko, head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, said on Telegram, citing preliminary information.

“Among them, there is a 15-year-old girl. Everyone is in the hospital in moderate condition,” Reznichenko said, adding that two residential districts had been hit, and an “industrial enterprise” was now on fire.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told the Kyiv International Economic Forum on Thursday that “missiles are flying over Ukraine.”

“They are trying to hit our gas production facilities, Pivdenmash [a machine-building plant in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro] and some other facilities,” said Shmyhal.

And Kyrylo Tymoshenko, Deputy Head of the Office of the Ukrainian President said there had been “several hits to two infrastructure objects” in Dnipro in a post on Telegram.

Another three men were hospitalized after being wounded in missile strikes that hit “critical infrastructure” in Izium, in the Kharkiv region, on Thursday morning, said Oleh Syniehubov, governor of the region, on Telegram.

The southern region of Odesa was also hit by Russian strikes on Thursday, according to Maksym Marchenko, the head of Odesa’s regional administration, who said that there had been “a missile attack on a regional infrastructure facility” in a Telegram post.

Some context: Russia’s renewed targeting of civilian infrastructure comes after Moscow’s forces fired around 100 missiles on at least a dozen cities and districts Tuesday, according to Ukrainian officials and a CNN analysis of the strikes. The attacks appeared to be the largest since Oct. 10, when Russia stepped up its campaign to destroy electricity, water and gas infrastructure across Ukraine. 

US President Joe Biden on Thursday responded to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s claim that a Ukrainian missile was not responsible for a deadly explosion in Poland on Tuesday.

Two farmers died Tuesday when a missile landed outside the rural eastern Polish village of Przewodow, about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) west from the Ukrainian border.

Polish officials have indicated that it is likely a Ukrainian missile, deployed by its air defenses amid waves of Russian missile attacks Tuesday, fell inside Polish territory.

Zelensky’s comments: Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Zelensky said he did not believe the missile was Ukrainian.

Later, in his daily video address, Zelensky said “clarification of all the circumstances of how Russian aggression crossed the Polish border” was now an issue before the UN Security Council. He said he had spoken with Polish President Andrzej Duda and expressed his condolences but insisted it was “Russian aggression” that had claimed the lives of two Polish citizens.

Poland’s Ambassador to the United Nations says the country acted with “full restraint” after a suspected Russian-made missile fell inside its border on Tuesday, killing two residents and sparking fears of an escalation in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Speaking at the UN Security Council on Wednesday, Krzysztof Szczerski said Poland immediately launched an “extensive multiphase investigation” into the missile, which Poland and NATO said was likely fired by Ukrainian forces defending their country against a barrage of Russian strikes.

Two farmers died when the missile caused an explosion outside the rural eastern Polish village of Przewodow, about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) west from the Ukrainian border.

Szczerski said initial findings support the theory the event was not a deliberate attack. “But naturally, we need to wait for the final conclusion until the investigation is over,” he said.

Some context: Tuesday’s incident marks the first time a NATO country has been directly hit during the nearly nine-month conflict and prompted an emergency meeting of ambassadors from the US-led military alliance in Brussels on Wednesday.

NATO head Jens Stoltenberg said Russia bears “ultimate responsibility” for the incident, “as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine.”