In the longest and most dangerous night since the beginning of the war , US President Joe Biden was awakened by his advisers around 4.30 with the worst update he could receive : Vladimir Putin's forces may have attacked a NATO country .
After the news of the fall of two Russian-made missiles on Polish territory , hectic hours began for the leader of the Western world, between phone calls and virtual meetings held in the ballroom of the hotel where he is staying in Indonesia for the G20 in Bali .
First he calls his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda , to whom he has assured the protection of the United States since the beginning of the Russian invasion. Then consultation with the partners of the G7, NATO and the G20, while in Washington the Pentagon and the State Department begin to disseminate the administration's line on the incident: maximum collaboration in Warsaw for investigations to establish the origin of the missile but it is still too early to decide the next steps.
Then the press conference, as soon as the situation becomes clearer: that the rocket took off from Russia is "improbable", guarantees Biden .
A measured response that receives the appreciation of the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, who defines it as "professional". However, the American president reiterates that the intensification of Moscow's attacks on Ukraine, precisely in the hours in which the G20 was meeting, is a brutal and inhuman provocation , underlines that the commitment towards the partners of the Atlantic Alliance is "iron » and that the United States will not hesitate to defend every inch of NATO territory.
"At the moment the United States has not collected any evidence that contradicts President Duda's preliminary assessment according to which the missile that exploded in Poland was Ukrainian", echoes the spokeswoman for the American National Security Council, Adrienne Watson, stressing however that at the beyond the conclusions of the investigation, "it is clear that Russia is ultimately responsible for this tragic incident and that ".
