When an explosion hit the small Polish town of Przewodow, close to the border with Ukraine, on Tuesday (15), Joanna Magus’s first thought was that something had happened in the grain drying warehouse.
The reality, however, was more serious: a missile hit and killed two people, leaving the city at the center of a dangerous increase in tensions in the Ukrainian War.
The first indications pointed to a Russian-made artifact, and an attack by Moscow on a NATO member would have the potential to cause the conflict to leak beyond the Ukrainian borders. This Wednesday (16), declarations from Warsaw and the western military alliance, pointing to an accident with a Ukrainian air defense system, dissipated tensions a little.
A primary school teacher in Przewodow, Magus, 60, told the AFP news agency that she felt scared and did not sleep at night. “I hope it’s a stray missile because if it isn’t, we’re helpless,” she says.
Residents of the village, which has only 500 inhabitants, said that the impact occurred on a grain drying plant near the school where Magus teaches. When the projectile exploded, she was sitting in the house, where you can see the barns through the window.
“I heard a big explosion, a terrible explosion. I went up to the window and saw a huge cloud of dark smoke”, he says, adding that he imagined, at first, that some equipment in the barn had caused the explosion.
Magus telephoned her husband, who was out of the house, and learned that he “more or less saw” what had happened. “He was terrified. He said that something had exploded and it was feared that two people had died. It was a total panic”, reports the teacher.
The two deaths were of two men, in their 60s, who worked in the drying facility. Ewa Byra, headmistress of Przewodow primary school, says that one of the dead was married to one of the school’s cleaners. The other victim was the father of a former student.
“We didn’t expect that, even if accidents happen. Especially when the war takes place just 6 kilometers from the city”, says the educator, adding that she would set up a psychological support cell for students and residents who show up at the school.
The explosion site was cordoned off by the police. According to an AFP report in the city, agents on Wednesday guarded the road leading to the small village which, in addition to the school and houses, is home to a church and a cemetery.
Father Bogdan Wazny explained that the city emptied out as soon as people heard about the missile. No one attended Mass on Tuesday afternoon, an unheard of in the very Catholic region.
He Wazny claims he knew the two victims well. “They were very kind. They helped around the parish whenever I asked.” According to him, one of the dead had helped to renovate the facade of the church.
The local community announced three days of mourning.
On Wednesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the explosion was likely caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile. The rocket was launched by an S-300, an old Soviet model that is also Kiev’s main anti-aircraft system.
For the Norwegian, this does not mean, however, that Volodymir Zelensky’s Army can be blamed for the incident. Ukraine denies that the missile came from its country and says the hypothesis is nothing more than a “conspiracy theory” spread by Russia.
Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, told reporters that Stoltenberg’s thesis was confirmed, adding that “absolutely nothing indicates that this was a deliberate attack” against his country. Similar statements came from the Minister of Defense of Belgium, Ludivine Dedonder, and, according to NATO sources, from the American Joe Biden himself to allies.
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