The crews of Ukraine’s US-supplied Patriot air defense systems, earlier destroyed by Russian forces, were “almost certainly” killed, Forbes magazine has reported.
The news outlet mentioned a Russian drone operator’s “persistence and good fortune”, which “paid off on Saturday, when they located a Ukrainian convoy including at least two truck-mounted quad-launchers for a Patriot surface-to-air missile battery” in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).
“The Ukrainians lost—in one calamity—up to 13 percent of their Patriot launchers,” so “the air over eastern Ukraine may have gotten a lot safer for the Russians,” according to Forbes.
The report comes after a security source told Sputnik that two Patriot systems were among the military hardware of Ukrainian troops destroyed by a strike of Russia's Iskander surface-to-surface ballistic missile in the DPR.
Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) data showed that the strike also destroyed an S-300 missile system of Ukrainian troops near the DPR’s town of Pokrovsk.
The last time the Russian military hit a Patriot was in late February, when the system’s launcher, tractor, ammunition and transport-loading vehicle were destroyed by high-precision weapons.
Western countries ramped up their military supplies to the Kiev regime shortly after the start of Russia's special military operation in 2022. Moscow has repeatedly warned against continued arms deliveries to Kiev, saying that it would lead to further escalation of the conflict.