What the Poland missile incident reveals about Russia – and Nato

This was an accident, or an incident, waiting to happen. The missile that appears to have killed two people on a farm just inside Poland could have ignited World War Three. In the event, so far at least, wiser counsels have prevailed. And it is worth observing that just sometimes – although too rarely – the scale of the danger draws a proportionately cautious response.

It was, of course, pure chance that so many national leaders were physically in the same place at the time, and that something akin to a global security summit could be assembled at once. It was fortunate, too, perhaps, that none of those leaders were among those shouting from the sidelines that force, or strength, “is the only language Russia understands”.

Volodymyr Zelensky had good reason for his fury: the strike came amid a blizzard of missile attacks that knocked out nearly half of Ukraine’s power and appeared to be Russia’s hostile response to the 10-point peace plan the Ukrainian president had presented only hours earlier. Nor is it hard to grasp his instinctive blaming of Russia, or his barely disguised hope that such an incident might bring Nato formally – rather than informally – into this war.

But it would be unfortunate if the astute judgement and dignity that have characterised his public statements hitherto were to give way to the sort of reckless impetuosity favoured by the former Georgian leader, Mikheil Saakashvili. We must still hope – and that “we” must surely include Ukrainians – that Ukraine’s survival and future prosperity as an independent nation can be secured without triggering a pan-European, even global, conflagration.

There were always several possible explanations for the strike on a Polish barn. These range from the most malign – that Russia deliberately struck just inside Ukraine’s Nato-affiliated neighbour to test the response of the alliance; through the military mistake, whereby a Russian missile intended for a Ukrainian target went marginally astray; to the explanation that now seems to be preferred: that it was not a Russian missile, but a Ukrainian missile launched to deflect a Russian attack, that went off course and tragically landed in Poland.

A fourth, conspiratorial theory was also advanced: that it was a deliberate provocation by Ukraine in an effort to trigger the implementation of Nato’s Article 5, which stipulates that an attack on one member should be treated as an attack on all.

Whatever the truth, Joe Biden – and all those, including Rishi Sunak, who went on the record to call for the facts to be established before any conclusions were drawn – acted with commendable dispatch and restraint. They include the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, who was quick to state that the attack was unlikely to have been intentional, and subsequently accepted that it was “very likely” that it had been caused by Ukraine’s air defences.

The fact that the Kremlin’s official spokesperson rapidly complimented the United States on its “measured and more professional response” should not detract from this. Indeed, it might be seen as a small olive branch. When Europe went to bed on Tuesday night, there was a real sense that a line was being crossed; when it woke up on Wednesday morning, the immediate danger had largely been defused.

All that said, however, the danger of a missile strike, deliberate or accidental, on one of Ukraine’s Nato-member neighbours is one of the scenarios Ukraine’s Western allies have been most afraid of from the start. And not just Ukraine’s Western allies, but Russia, too.

It has been notable how – until it changed tactics, to strike at Ukraine’s civilian power structures (after the attack on the Kerch Bridge) – Russia has largely avoided striking the west of the country, even though most of the West’s military help for Ukraine enters the country across these borderlands.

How very fearful Moscow is of this sort of scenario was also clear from the speed at which Russia’s defence ministry came out with its own chapter and verse of what had happened, referring to photographs and the type of air-defence missile involved. Russia also stated where its own closest missiles had struck – 35km inside Ukraine – which indicates the margin it allows for error.

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That this is the first such incident – at least, the first such incident reported – in nearly nine months of hostilities, and that it was handled in the way it was, suggests one conclusion: that the United States and Russia both wish to avoid any event taking place that could expand this war beyond Ukraine.

That might not reassure President Zelensky – who wants even greater Western support than has so far been supplied – or those many Ukrainians who say they are fighting not just for themselves, but to defend European civilisation against the Russian barbarians. But it should perhaps offer some consolation to those of us who do not see the war in these terms, and who fervently hope, maybe selfishly, that it can somehow be contained.

Even if this incident has been successfully defused, however, there can be no guarantee that mistakes that could widen this war will not be made in future. Indeed, the longer the war, the greater the risk of mistakes. And they may not necessarily be handled as judiciously next time round.

For while there is no question that Russia bears sole responsibility for this war, having illegally invaded another country, the risk of a spark being generated in this part of Europe that could light a continent-wide fire war has been evident for the best part of two decades, if not since the Soviet Union’s collapse.

The refusal of the United States and Nato to countenance any pan-European security arrangement that would recognise Russia’s security concerns is part of the context. But the decisive factor has been the way in which countries ever closer to Russia’s western borders have been embraced by Nato. For both sides, Ukraine – Nazi Germany’s route into Russia 80 years ago – represented the last frontier.

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It is all very well to argue that sovereign states have the absolute right to make their own choices, and that Poland, the Baltic states, and the other former Soviet and Warsaw Pact states acted rationally in their own interests in applying to Nato for the protection of that famed Article 5. But the implications are now laid out before us.

Nato members (though not officially as members of the alliance) are now fighting a weak Russia for the future of Ukraine, albeit at one remove. But what if the US had leapt to the conclusion that it was a Russian missile that fell in Poland this week? And what if it had not been seen as a mistake?

Between 1999 and 2004, as Nato was being joined by ever more countries ever closer to Russia, one of the hypothetical questions regularly raised was whether Americans would be prepared to go to war with Russia on behalf of one of the newer, smaller allies, such as Estonia.

A clear answer never emerged. But the longer the war in Ukraine goes on, the more likely it has to be that this question, or a similar one, will arise for real. The answer then would either expose the Article 5 guarantee as not being worth the paper it is written on, or open up the immediate prospect of a new world war. That threat was averted this week, but for how much longer?