Russia’s Investigative Committee published damning video and documentary evidence on Thursday pinpointing the surface-to-air missile system used to destroy the Russian Aerospace Force Ilyushin Il-76 over Belgorod region last week, saying its analysis of 116 missile fragments revealed that the missile used was an MIM-104A Patriot.
Evidence included English-language inscriptions, including coded part numbers, the word “Raytheon” (the Patriot’s manufacturer), “Patriot Security Classification Guide” and “Contract” information.
The White House has remained silent on the Il-76 shootdown for over a week after promising to “get more information” last Wednesday. Washington’s European allies have similarly refrained from commenting on the incident.
Russian investigators did not elaborate on the origins of the Patriot missiles used to down the Il-76 in Thursday’s information dump, with the United States, Germany and the Netherlands all known to have provided Kiev with the missiles in 2023. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that he does not know Kiev’s motives in attacking the plane, which had 65 Ukrainian PoWs along with nine Russian flight personnel and military police troops onboard, but speculated that the attack may have been a diversion, or a provocation to invoke an extreme Russian response.
‘Very Complex’ Weapons
“I think that it’s fair to say that there are either American, Israel or some European military people [in Ukraine], or contractors who are experts in the use of the Patriot system. The team for the Patriot is over 90 people. It’s very complex,” former Pentagon and National Security Agency officer and retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik, when asked whether it was possible that there was some kind of direct American oversight over the Patriot missile system which downed the Il-76.
Ukrainian Air Defense crews received a ten-week crash course in the basics of the billion dollar system’s operation last spring, which is simply “not enough time” to learn all the details of such a complex piece of hardware, not to mention apply knowledge gained, “which is usually supervised,” Kwiatkowski emphasized.
“My experiences with contractors and contractor systems [has been that] they don’t want their systems to be broken or mishandled. They want to be able to be there looking over the shoulder. There’s always kind of training transition. So I would expect that there are contractors, very possibly people in the direct employ of the United States, or possibly contractors in Europe that use the Patriot and possibly obviously the Israelis or retired military,” the retired Air Force Officer said.
American Contractors on the Ground?
It’s not far fetched to imagine that there are Americans in Ukraine serving in a military capacity, Kwiatkowski said, pointing to confirmation by the Pentagon in November 2022 that a “small number” of US troops were operating in Ukraine “inspecting” Western arms aid to Kiev.
“We know they’re there,” Kwiatkowski said. “Are any of these Americans associated with the Patriot batteries? I would think so. These are extremely expensive systems. They’re extremely complex, and like everything that’s complex, they’re vulnerable. Vulnerable to both operator error and malfunction.”
“So it would be inconsistent with American policy, American military policy to simply send these billion dollar systems with a $1 million-per-missile” without any oversight, Kwiatkowski stressed, noting that the Pentagon doesn’t want to “waste” its “investment” by doing so. “Are they in uniform? Are they contractors? Are they foreign contractors, Europeans or Israelis that we have hired?” Those are the relevant questions, in the retired Air Force officer’s perspective.
Did the Pentagon Know Patriot Missiles Were Fired in Ukraine on January 24?
Kwiatkowski is confident that the Pentagon has direct intelligence of the January 24 attack on the Russian Il-76.
“Technology wise, we have surveillance at the top level. We’re surveilling everything that goes on in the sea, land and air in that region. Our aircraft and equipment are monitoring what happens. So there is no doubt that when that Patriot missile, two of them, were launched against that particular airplane, there’s no doubt that the American government, the Pentagon, knew immediately that it had been launched. Now, the question is, did they know what it had been launched against? That would be the core of this question,” she noted.
That said, even though Kiev is wholly reliant on the US and NATO for its continued military and economic survival, Kwiatkowski doesn’t believe US influence in the country is total. “For us to direct them to do this or do that with our weapons? No, because we, from the very beginning, directed them not to sell them to other countries, and that happened. So we really don't have the control. We kind of have a superficial layer but not real control,” she said.
Kwiatkowski doesn’t rule out that last week’s Il-76 incident was an accidental fire by the Ukrainians, the result of a miscommunication, or some kind of devious provocation “to basically make sure that none of those PoWs could say anything to the media, because maybe what they say wouldn’t lend credence to Kiev or the battle that they’re still trying to fight with Russia. It’s hard to say.” If it was purposeful, it would send a “disturbing message” that the Zelensky regime is “not even in control of their own country’s narrative” anymore, the observer summed up.