A worrying lesson from the Polish missile tragedy

When what seems to have been a Ukrainian S-300 air defence missile accidentally hit the village of Przewodów in Poland, killing two farm workers, it became at once a litmus test of national attitudes and a reminder of the wider dangers of the war in Ukraine.

At first, confusion about what had happened allowed everyone to reach for their favourite conclusion. There were suggestions that this was a deliberate Russian attack to test Nato’s will, and calls for the alliance’s Article 5 – whereby an attack on one member should be considered an attack on all – to be invoked. Poland’s early assessment that this was a ‘Russian-made missile’, which could still apply to much of Ukraine’s arsenal, too, was quickly turned into a ‘Russian missile’ in clickbait headlines.

Meanwhile, the usual instant experts on Twitter were claiming that it was not an S-300 but an air-launched Kh-101 cruise missile of the sort the Russians were firing at Ukrainian targets.