WARSAW, POLAND (AP) – A funeral was held on Saturday for one of two Polish men who died in a missile explosion near the border with Ukraine, deaths that Western officials said appeared to have been caused by a Ukrainian air defence missile that went astray.
White roses were placed on the wooden casket of Boguslaw Wos, described by the Polish state news agency PAP as a 62-year-old warehouse manager. A pallbearer carried a black-and-white photo of him.
Wos and another man died last Tuesday in Przewodow, a small farming community six kilometres from the border with Ukraine as that country was defending itself against a barrage of Russian missiles directed at Ukraine’s power infrastructure.
Officials from Poland, NATO and the United States (US) said they think Russia is to blame for the deaths no matter what because a Ukrainian missile would not have gone astray in Poland had the country not been forced to defend itself against Russian attacks.
A Polish investigation to determine the source of the missile and the circumstances of the explosion has been launched with support from the US and Ukrainian investigators. The Pentagon sent a small team of forensics and explosive ordnance experts to the missile impact site, a senior defence official said on Friday on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorised to discuss details.
