Key events
Oleksandr Syenkevych, mayor of Mykolaiv, has posted to Telegram to say that there is an air alarm in effect in the region. Additionally, journalist Mark MacKinnon has reported that air raid sirens are sounding in the southern port city of Odesa.
Erdoğan urges against provocation over Poland incident
Russian state-owned Tass news agency is reporting that Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is satisfied with Russia’s claim that it was not involved in the incident in Poland, and that “insisting that the missiles were Russian-made will provoke this issue”. Tass reports:
“I have to respect the position of Russia, which said that this is not its missile. For us, this is important,” Erdoğan said, answering a question from Tass following the results of participation in the G20 summit in Bali.
The Turkish leader also called for a detailed investigation into the incident.
In addition, Erdoğan called US President Joe Biden’s statements that “these were not Russian-made missiles” important. “[German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz said that they are in contact with each other, like six Nato countries. There was also Biden’s statement. I think that insisting that the missiles were Russian-made will provoke this issue. We are trying as much as possible rather, put Russia and Ukraine at the same negotiating table. In this regard, we believe that such a method as provocations is not correct. The path to peace lies through dialogue,” the Turkish president added.
China urges ‘calm and restraint’ over incident in Poland
All parties should “stay calm and exercise restraint under current circumstances,” Reuters report China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, told a regular media briefing on Wednesday, in remarks about the explosion that killed two people in Poland.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, an aide to Ukraine’s president, has warned on Telegram that emergency electricity disconnections are possible today to stabilise supply, following the Russian barrage of attacks on energy infrastructure yesterday.
Tymoshenko listed Volyn, Zhytomyr, Lviv, Sumy, Ternopil, Kharkiv and Khmelnytskyi regions as areas where utilities were still not fully restored to the whole population.
While world attention is understandably focussed on reaction to the explosion in Poland, Ukraine continues to defend itself. Vitaliy Kim, governor of Mykolaiv has reported on Telegram that overnight in his region Ukraine shot down 12 missiles and nine Shahed-136 kamikaze drones. He did not report any casualties in the region.
Here is one of the latest images from Przewodów, Poland sent to us over the newswires.
Poland remains a very safe country thanks to its membership in Nato, Poland’s deputy foreign minister said on Wednesday, as Nato prepares to meet in Brussels to discuss a missile that killed two people in Poland on Tuesday.
“The reaction of our allies, their unequivocal support and willingness to stand by us, shows that we are a much safer country than if we were not in Nato,” Reuters report Pawel Jablonski told radio station RMF FM on Wednesday morning.
Jessica Elgot
Jessica Elgot is in Bali for the Guardian attending the G20 summit. She has a little more detail here on the cancellation of the UK-China bilateral and Downing Street reaction to events in Poland:
Number 10 said there were “movements with timings on both sides” which led to the cancellation of the China bilateral, but prime minister Rishi Sunak had wanted the meeting to go ahead. “The prime minister obviously thinks it is still important to have that conversation with President Xi Jinping,” his spokesman said.
Downing Street said the missile attacks on Ukraine which were coming at a time when world leaders are meeting was a further demonstration “of contempt Russia has for the international order.” But they said facts were “still being established” about what happened with the missile in Poland.
In a clip filmed with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, Sunak said they were both “particularly disturbed by the continued barbaric activity of Russia in bombarding the Ukrainian people in their civilian infrastructure. We spoke to the foreign minister of Ukraine earlier today to express our sympathies about that and continue to offer support to Ukraine.”
Medvedev: Polish incident shows ‘west moves closer to world war’
Former Russian president and hawkish long-term ally of Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev, has said that the explosion on Polish territory showed the west was moving closer to another World War.
“The incident with the Ukrainian-alleged ‘missile strike’ on a Polish farm proves just one thing: waging a hybrid war against Russia, the west moves closer to world war,” Medvedev wrote on Twitter.
In a separate development this morning, the Russian foreign ministry has repeated on Telegram a claim from its mission to the European Union that an announcement of further training initiatives for Ukrainian forces under the EU flag is “aimed at escalation” and marks “another step to enhance EU involvement in the conflict in Ukraine”.
Russia commenced its latest invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and in September it claimed to annex four regions of the country into the Russian Federation, following the occupation and annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni expressed “great apprehension and concern” over the missile explosion, Reuters reports her office said on Wednesday, adding she was meeting with Nato and European allies to consider possible steps.
Meloni also had a phone conversation with Polish counterpart Mateusz Morawiecki, her office added in a statement.
UK-China bilateral at G20 cancelled – Sunak and Trudeau to speak to Zelenskiy
Jessica Elgot
Jessica Elgot is in Bali for the the Guardian for the G20 summit and sends this report:
The bilateral between the UK and China – billed as the first in five years – has been cancelled at the G20, with time pressures blamed because of snap meetings in the aftermath of the strike in Poland by the Ukrainian border.
Instead, Rishi Sunak and the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau will speak to president Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the mid-afternoon. It comes after Joe Biden said the missile that landed in Poland, killing two people, was unlikely to have been fired from Russia due to its trajectory.
It is understood the UK does not dispute the US version of events but both Sunak and Downing Street would not comment on the record about the provenance of the explosion. “It is important that we remain calm and focus on establishing the facts,” Sunak said.
Sunak and Trudeau, who were tasked with speaking to Zelenskiy after a snap meeting with G7 and Nato leaders, spoke earlier to the Ukrainian foreign minister.
The prime minister was woken up at 5am Balinese time to be briefed on the incident in Poland, speaking shortly afterwards to his defence and foreign secretary, and to Poland’s president Andrezj Duda around 7pm.
Sunak also held a bilateral meeting with Biden, the first time the pair have formally met. Number 10 said that, unusually, the pair did not discuss a US-UK trade deal, a further hint that Sunak is taking a slower approach to trade having already hinted he wants to thoroughly review work on the trade deal with India.
Both Biden and Sunak spoke about the global economic challenges as well as Biden saying he was keen to see progress on the Northern Ireland protocol. Biden is understood to have said he believed Sunak also wanted to see a resolution with the EU as soon as possible.
This is Martin Belam taking over the live blog in London, on what so far is a fast-paced day of diplomatic reactions to the explosions in Poland last night which killed two people. Early indications appear to be that the weapon that landed inside Nato’s borders was Russian-made, but had been used as part of Ukraine’s air defence systems. This has not been confirmed.
Here are some of the latest developments:
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Nato is due to hold an emergency meeting at 9am GMT.
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Poland’s national security council (BBN) said on Wednesday it will meet again at 1100 GMT. “The BBN is currently analysing the arrangements made so far with commanders, service chiefs and allies,” BBN head Jacek Siewiera said in a post on Twitter. The Polish security council had first met on Tuesday night following news of the strike.
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Nato member Poland’s president early on Wednesday said the country had no concrete evidence showing who fired the missile, which struck a Polish grain facility some 6 km (4 miles) from the Ukrainian border.
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US president Joe Biden said the missile was probably not fired from Russia.
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Finland’s Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told a news conference on Wednesday morning it was not yet possible to tell the origin of a missile which killed two people in Poland, Reuters reports.
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Hungary’s foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said on his official Facebook page that Hungary has a special relationship with Poland and is watching Polish developments “with great concern”.
Julian Borger offers this analysis of what might happen next: Poland explosion unlikely to spark escalation – but risks of Nato-Russia clash are real
International summits like the G20 traditionally end in a jointly issued communique.
It’s important to note that the statement coming from leaders gathered in Bali is a draft “declaration” not a “communique”.
According to the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, the distinction between the two is that a communique is agreed by all sides, while a declaration is an implicit admission that not all countries present could agree.
As a result, the declaration in Bali includes an unusual reference to a “majority” of G20 members agreeing the wording on the war in Ukraine.
Patrick adds:
Whether a communique or a declaration, these statements are not binding on member states, but are crafted to secure maximum agreement.
G20 leaders declaration divided over Russia
Patrick Wintour
A draft declaration from G20 leaders said “most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine”, demanding Russia’s “complete and unconditional withdrawal” from its neighbour’s territory.
The reference to war is a rejection of Russia’s claim that it is involved in a “special military operation”.
But it also said “there were other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions”, reflecting the divisions among G20 states over Russia.
The declaration warns that “the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible. The peaceful resolution of conflicts, efforts to address crises, as well as diplomacy and dialogue, are vital. Today’s era must not be of war.”
The Ukraine war, the statement stressed “is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy – constraining growth, increasing inflation, disrupting supply chains, heightening energy and food insecurity, and elevating financial stability risks”.
The draft did, however, note: “There were other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions.”
On Tuesday, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was quoted by Russia’s Tass news agency as saying “the west added the phrase ‘many delegations condemned Russia,’ [but] we noted that alternative views were also outlined”.
He left Indonesia later in the day.
Draft G20 leaders declaration ‘deplores in strongest terms Russian aggression against Ukraine’
A draft declaration from G20 leaders says it’s essential to uphold international law and the multilateral system that safeguards peace, at the close of the summit in Bali.
The leaders said they “deplore in strongest terms Russian aggression against Ukraine”.
It’s not clear whether this draft declaration was agreed by all members, but as Russia is a member of the G20, it appears unlikely.
The declaration said most members condemned the war but “there were other views”.
A joint G20 communique would usually be agreed by all parties, but as agreement appeared unlikely, the summits hosts – Indonesia – had instead been pushing for a leaders’ declaration.
The declaration also said members’ central banks would continue to appropriately calibrate the pace of monetary policy tightening.
