Poland said Monday that Germany will deploy a US-made Patriot air defense missile system to the Polish border with Ukraine. The agreement comes less than a week after a Ukrainian air defense missile hit a grain depot in a Polish village, killing two people.
Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak wrote on Twitter that he accepted the offer to deploy a Patriot system from his German counterpart with “satisfaction.”
The agreement comes as tensions have been high between Poland and Germany. Warsaw has criticized the government of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for being too hesitant to arm Ukraine, and Poland recently asked Germany for $1.3 trillion in war reparations from World War II.
Despite the spats, German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said Monday that Poland is a “friend and ally” of Berlin in a statement on the Patriot deployment. She said the technical details of the agreement are still being worked out.
The incident in Poland led to the first major rift between Ukraine and its Western backers. When the news initially broke that a missile first hit Poland, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his top advisors framed it as a deliberate Russian attack and called for NATO action. The US reportedly told Ukrainian officials to “tread carefully” in response to the hysteria.
Even after the US, Poland, and NATO said Ukrainian air defenses likely fired the missile that hit Poland, Zelensky doubled down and insisted it wasn’t Ukrainian. He later backed down slightly, admitting that he didn’t know for certain whose missile it was.
“…Poland is a ‘friend and ally’ of Berlin…” With friends like these, who needs enemies?
They have a great relationship. Not perfect but not at all toxic. They work through their bilateral issues in a friendly manner. What’s your point?
Probably that they can’t actually support or defend each other, but that the U.S. would do all the heavy lifting. Ergo, ‘friend and ally’ is pretty much a worthless statement.
Not to mention their long history of mutual contempt.
From Zero Hedge: Lying journo fired. Well, one of the two at least. (Btw, “article 5” does NOT require NATO members to go to war. That has always been false. It simply requires them to see “an attack on one as an attack on all”.)
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ap-fires-reporter-who-risked-triggering-wwiii-polish-missile-misinformation
The logical consequence of Article 5 is that all NATO members would come to the defnse of the attacked nation(s) in such a scenario. Otherwise, what would be the point of “seeing” an attack as one on all NATO members? I’m not sure what the splitting of these hairs accomplishes.
A “logical consequence” and a “binding treaty obligation” are two entirely different things.
What the splitting of these hairs accomplishes is leaving NATO member regimes the ability to say “we ain’t touchin’ that.”
Article 5 wasn’t invoked, so that’s not what the splitting of hairs is about. I’ll quote Ray McGovern today:
“Hawkish cries for NATO retaliation against Russia, under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, revealed that America’s War Party is still very much with us and eager for the next confrontation with Putin’s Russia.”
My point is that article 5 does require NATO action and that this wasn’t an invocation of Article 5, whether or not Ukraine wanted it to be. Saying “Artilce 5 does NOT require NATO to go to war” is useless, inaccurate, and dangerous. It does. If Article 5 were invoked, NATO would go to war. All that is worth saying about this is that we are all lucky Article 5 wasn’t invoked.
Article 5 doesn’t require anyone to go to war. Period.
You need to read Red Douglas below. The language very specifically separates the attack from the response, a very logical structure given the number of signatories.
Note how the top link, the Bloomberg news on MSN com, describes this:
“Germany to Deploy Patriot Missiles to Defend Polish Airspace”
From?
“following a strike that raised fears of a significant escalation between NATO allies and Russia”
Oh, so it was RUSSIA that send the missile.
“securing an agreement less than a week after an explosion killed two people in a village near the Ukrainian border. ”
And explosion of WHAT?
“The incident came nine months after President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine.”
Ah, so it must be Putin who did it!
“It was defused after NATO and Polish authorities attributed the blast, which occurred during a broad Russian missile strike on Ukraine,”
RUSSIANS DID IT!!!
“to Ukrainian air-defense targeting a Russian projectile.”
Oh, wait. Finally mentioning it was Ukrainian? Not really: the blast just OCCURRED. It wasn’t a Ukrainian rocket, it just “occurred”. And the only mention of explosive objects is “a Russian projectile”.
Zero mention of a Ukrainian missile. And no picture of the missile strike in question, of course. And no mention, ever, of that Ukraine’s S-300 system frequently misfires, with the missiles falling in Ukraine and sometimes damaging buildings, which they then take photos of to claim that “Russian artillery targets buildings”.
I can assure you, Dave Decamp does not argue that the missle was Russian. The missle is described in this article as “a Ukrainian air defense missile”… In other words, the author is making the same points you do about the MSM reporting of the issue, but with less hyperbole.
You know that Zelensky told the media, “This is a Russian missile attack on collective security. This is a really significant escalation. Action is needed.”
But apparently he did more than that. He called Biden and his administration several times. But his calls went unanswered.
Finally National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan returned a call to tell him to cool it with the rhetoric. But this is clear now: Zel wasn’t just posturing, he really tried to use the issue to start a war between NATO and Russia.
Over a missile accidentally going astray.
By the madman Zel’s own logic, NATO should now declare war on Ukraine. Do what Russia has refrained from doing, bomb the presidential residence (stolen from the real elected president and looted in 2014) and end this.