The news that a missile landing in Poland appears to have been Ukrainian, not Russian, means the "entire planet can breathe a little easier after a very dangerous day, with potential errors, miscalculations, and jumping to conclusions," retired U.S. Air Force Brigadier Gen. Blaine Holt told Newsmax on Wednesday.
"What we understand now or what we think we understand is that potentially Ukrainian interceptors hit Russian missiles and then the shrapnel frag pattern is what went into the grain silos," Newsmax contributor Holt, a former U.S. Deputy Military Representative to NATO, said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America."
"What we should be very happy about this morning is that NATO has already had its first round of meetings this morning," Holt added. "It does not look like they're going to declare Article Four, which would be a threat against the NATO nations."
Poland's President Andrzej Duda said Wednesday that the missile that came across his country's border, killing two people, was likely a Ukrainian air defense missile and that there was no evidence suggesting Russia intentionally launched an attack. His announcement followed similar suggestions by the United States.
President Joe Biden told G7 and NATO partners early Wednesday that the incident was caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile, not Russian, a NATO source told Reuters.
Holt said it bothers him that Ukraine had prepared remarks that were "ready to go" saying that the missile blasts were an escalation to show the danger Russia poses, but he doesn't think there was a "hidden game" involved.
"I think that there's this fog of war thing where folks in Ukraine may have lept to the conclusion that this is what happened, but later on, they probably found out something different about the use of their interceptors," Holt said. "To be very fair, it is hard in those early hours to figure out who did what to whom and how. There are very few countries except for ours and a few others that have the space assets to get to forensic information that can put our president into a good position to say what happened."
Meanwhile, he said he does not think NATO will invoke Article Four declarations, in which border countries say they are at a heightened posture, so measures won't escalate to Article 5, "where an attack on one is an attack on all, so we worry about a path to World War III."
Holt also on Wednesday said he thinks Ukraine should not have made an immediate statement about the missiles, and that he's happy about the intelligence work that's been done by U.S. European Command and NATO countries to determine what happened.
"Isn't that so good for everybody?" he said, noting that talks at the G-20 summit could potentially lead to the path toward diplomacy in the Ukraine war.
"We've been saying this since this war started that a miscalculation could take us into that place and look how dangerous it is," said Holt, noting the defeats Russia's military is enduring.
At this point, there was a flurry of activity in Brussels to determine whether the use of Article 4 should be taken, and "the system works very well," said Holt, drawing on his experience. "It's very organized and I'm just very proud to have been a part of it. I'm excited about what happened here. It seems like it is positive news, at least for the rest of the world, that this was an accident."
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