Patriot missile launchers
© AP / Michal DyjukPatriot missile launchers acquired from the US are seen deployed in Warsaw, Poland, February 6, 2023

Comment: France and the French military, who early on had passed on the suspicion that it was American missiles that downed the Russian Il-76 with 65 Ukrainian POW about to be released according to an agreement with Kiev, decided it was the better course of action to do away with formalities and call a spade a spade. The news from France comes interestngly enough following a statement from Vladimir Putin: "I state this officially: We ask for international experts to be deployed [here] to conduct an analysis, assess the existing material evidence of the fact that the plane was downed by the Patriot system," While it does not enter into the Russian proposal, it nevertheless can be interpreted as an answer. It is a bit like saying: International investigation! What for?


France has determined that Ukraine used a US-made Patriot missile to kill 65 of its own POWs

The French military has concluded that Ukrainian forces used an American-supplied Patriot air defense system to shoot down a Russian plane carrying prisoners of war, an official told the Associated Press on Friday. Russian investigators have reached the same verdict.

The plane, a Russian Il-76, was shot down over Belgorod Region last Wednesday while carrying 65 captured Ukrainian servicemen who were set to take part in a prisoner swap later that day. All of the POWs, as well as three Russian officers and six crew members, died in the crash.

A French military official told the Associated Press that a Patriot air defense battery was used to target the plane from around 50 kilometers away. Ukrainian forces surreptitiously moved the battery into range before turning on its radar "just long enough to hit [the plane]," the official said.

With an initial search of the crash site suggesting that a French missile may have been used to commit the attack, sources within the French military have already been telling the media for more than a week that the missile involved was American.

In a report released on Thursday, Russia's Investigative Committee concluded that the plane was brought down using two MIM-104A surface-to-air missiles launched from a Patriot battery near the Ukrainian village of Liptsy. Liptsy is located in Kharkov Region, around 10km from the Russian border.

Missile fragments found at the blast site bore English-language inscriptions, which revealed that the two projectiles were from a batch made in the 1980s. One piece read "Raytheon," a reference to the US arms maker that jointly designed the Patriot system.

Following the Investigative Committee's report, a source within Russia's security services told TASS that it is very likely that there were American specialists among the crew operating the system.

Kiev has refused to admit responsibility for the attack. However, the General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces said that it regularly uses such systems to target Russian military flights in the area. Ukraine's military intelligence agency, the GUR, stated that it was unsure whether the prisoners would be taken to the exchange point by air or other means and that it "was not informed about the need to ensure the safety of the airspace" over the border region.

The GUR knew that the plane was carrying Ukrainian POWs, Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week. Putin accused the "entire Kiev regime" of committing "crimes against its own citizens." By supplying the missiles that shot down the aircraft, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova declared on Thursday that US President Joe Biden and his administration have made Americans "complicit in a bloody tragedy."