Ukraine: Russians thought they destroyed S-300, but it was 2 or 3 Patriot arrays

Two US Patriot systems were destroyed by a Russian Iskander missile strike in the Donetsk People’s Republic, a senior official told Sputnik on Saturday.

The Russian Defense Ministry reported the Iskander strike earlier in the day. Initial evidence indicated that the strike destroyed an S-300 missile system of Ukrainian troops near the town of Pokrovsk in Donetsk. Sputnik later obtained material indicating that there were three missile systems destroyed by the Iskander strike.

“A check analysis found that in the recorded video it was not only the S-300, as previously stated, but two of the three vehicles that were destroyed [από το χτύπημα] it was the Patriot missile systems,” the source said. Without knowing the sources of Sputnik different sources explain the same thing.

The Iskander system missiles are used for many different purposes

The Iskander tactical missile system is a high-precision weapon with a firing range of up to 500 kilometers. The missile warhead can destroy almost any target: enemy command posts, equipment columns or air defenses. At the same time, the Ukrainians do not hope for long-range Taurus.

The Iskander can be armed with both ballistic and cruise missiles, which create false electronic jamming as they approach the target and become nearly impossible to intercept by air defense systems. Cruise missiles can fly at an extremely low altitude and under certain conditions be “hidden” by the terrain.

The US sent Raytheon air defense systems to Ukraine last spring, but they struggled to intercept Russian missiles and were themselves targeted.

The Iskanders have not been intercepted by Ukrainian air defenses

In January, an adviser to the Aviation Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces admitted that Ukraine’s air defenses had never actually managed to intercept a single one of the roughly 300 Kh-22-series missiles that Russian warplanes had fired at Ukraine since 2022.

In May 2023, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported that its forces had destroyed a Patriot stationed in Kiev with a hypersonic Kinzhal missile. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced a successful strike on another Patriot two weeks later.

In April 2022, Russia sent a diplomatic note to all NATO countries on the issue of arms supplies to Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned that any shipment containing weapons for Ukraine would become a legitimate target for Russian strikes.