Pentagon investigates reports of Russian missiles hitting Nato member Poland

The Pentagon is investigating reports that Russian missiles crossed into Nato member Poland, killing two people.

Local reports said the weapons hit a grain store in Przewodow, Lublin, near the border with Ukraine, in what could mark a serious escalation of the war in Ukraine.

Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki has called an urgent meeting of the country’s security and defence councils, a government spokesman said.

Pictures from the scene showed a huge crater in the ground. The Pentagon said it was taking the reports seriously but had no corroborating information.

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Asked at a Pentagon press briefing about Article 5, the collective defence clause of the Nato treaty, Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said: “I think it is incumbent on all of us to get the facts for we start speculating or jumping to conclusions.”

Latvia’s defence minister Artis Pabriks tweeted condolences “to our Polish brothers in arms,” and said: “Latvia fully stands with Polish friends and condemns this crime.”

Russia denied the reports and said that Polish media and officials were deliberately trying to escalate tensions.

It came as Moscow fired some 100 missiles on Ukraine, causing widespread power outages across the country, leaving the capital Kyiv without electricity and leaving at least one person dead.

The missiles hit several other cities including Lviv and Zhytomyr in the west, Kryvy Rih in the south and Kharkiv in the east. Several residential areas were reportedly hit. There were also claims the missiles had caused power cuts in neighbouring Moldova.

A Ukrainian air force spokesman said Russia fired around 100 missiles, while President Volodymyr Zelensky put the number at 85 but warned more could follow.

He said: “I know that the strikes turned off energy in many places… We are working, we will restore everything, we will survive.”

The barrage came just days after Russian troops retreated from the key southern city of Kherson and followed a pattern in recent weeks of Moscow lashing out far from the front after battlefield losses.

In the capital Kyiv, flames funnelled out of a five-storey apartment block, one of two residential buildings the authorities said had been hit there. The mayor said one person was confirmed killed and half the capital left without power. Residents were urged to stay indoors.

“The danger has not passed,” said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of President Zelensky’s office, as the country’s grid operator Ukrenergo said emergency outages were being enforced in response to attacks.

Other strikes or explosions were reported in cities ranging from Lviv and Zhytomyr in the west to Kryvy Rih in the south and Kharkiv in the east. Regional officials reported some of the attacks had knocked out electricity supplies.

The mayor of Lviv said power was down in the city and the mayor of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov, said critical infrastructure facilities had been damaged.

Hours earlier, the Ukrainian president had called on world leaders at the G20 summit in Indonesia to help bring an end to Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

The war was a focus of the G20 summit, where Western leaders denounced Moscow.

Western countries sought a summit declaration that would condemn the war despite Russian opposition and a lack of unanimity.

Diplomats circulated a 16-page draft that said: “Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy.”

France’s president Emmanuel Macron also called on China to cooperate more closely to help end the war. China is seen as a key Russian ally for the conflict, but in September it emerged that Beijing had “questions and concerns” about the conflict.

However, a Chinese summary of the talks with Mr Macron made no mention of Ukraine until the final paragraph.

The Kremlin’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, head of Russia’s delegation in Mr Putin’s absence, accused the West of trying to politicise the declaration.

Also on Tuesday, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) found that both Russia and Ukraine have tortured prisoners of war.

The Ukraine-based monitoring team based its findings on interviews with more than 100 prisoners of war on each side of the conflict.