Missile Explosion in Poland:
A Risk of Escalation

Nov 21, 2022

On the afternoon of Tuesday, November 15^th, a missile struck a grain facility in a small Polish village, killing two farm workers. The village lies just across Ukraine’s western border. The incident came during Russia’s largest missile barrage to date on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

At first, the Polish president said it was a "Russian-made missile," and that he might invoke Poland’s rights as a member of NATO. That would mean an immediate expansion of the bloody war in Ukraine, since most of Europe’s countries belong to the NATO alliance. But soon after, both Poland and the U.S. claimed that it was most likely an errant Ukrainian missile, launched to defend against Russia’s onslaught.

Ukrainian President Zelensky objected, insisting that the missile could not have been one of his. The Ukrainian army finds itself in the position of fighting a much larger adversary and wants NATO to take a more active role. His interest is to summon more help to the battle against Russia. The U.S. and the European Union have sent Ukraine weaponry, but not as much as Zelensky wants. The U.S. has said openly that its goal is to “weaken Russia"—which is not the same as winning the war for Ukraine.

By Friday, Ukrainian officials said it might have been their missile after all. (Many of their missiles are Russian-made.) And so the bloody quagmire continues, leaving Ukraine in rubble while tens of thousands of soldiers are maimed or killed.

This war, a proxy war between the U.S. and its allies and Russia, carries the constant risk of spiraling into World War III. The longer it goes on, the more the working class is exposed to these powers bringing even greater destruction—including nuclear destruction—onto all of us.