what do you think will be the ramifications of the deaths of the polish civilians by Russian missiles?
I’m reserving judgement until the missile is positively identified- it’s possible that it’s a Ukrainian air defense missile which went off-course while trying to intercept incoming Russian missiles.
But if it is a Russian missile, the consequences could be large: it would be a massive accidental escalation by the Russian government, and the Polish government could even use the incident to trigger Article 5 of the NATO Treaty and draw NATO into the war more directly. If we’re lucky, cooler heads will prevail and rather than a direct intervention this will only lead to increased resolve on the part of Poland and other NATO countries to back the Ukrainian government.
Given that Russia seems to have segued its purpose from “conquer Ukraine” to “break NATO”, that NATO has clearly conducted itself so far to avoid direct conflict with Russia, and that Soviet Cold War political strategy in case of hot war was said to include strikes on peripheral NATO members that more “core” powers might not be willing to go to war over, to the end of rupturing the alliance, are we certain this was unintentional?