Putin's murderous missile campaign against Ukraine's civilians

The missile that hit a farm in Przewodow, Poland, on Tuesday looked at first to be Russian, but now appears to have been fired by Ukrainian air defenses at incoming Russian missiles around the city of Lviv.  Russia launched a heavy barrage of missiles across Ukraine on Tuesday, more than 100 of them, according to the Ukraine Defense Ministry.  Lviv, a city in the far west of Ukraine near its border with Poland, had been largely spared by Russian missile attacks in recent months.  After the Ukrainian victory in Kherson, however, Vladimir Putin appears to have given the order to deliberately hit civilian targets across the country of Ukraine, including Kyiv, Kharkiv, the two largest cities, and Lviv, the largest city in the country’s west.  According to Ukrainian military sources, Ukrainian air defenses were able to shoot down 70 of the missiles Russia fired at Ukrainian population centers on Tuesday. 

Reports from Ukraine speculate that the missile which struck in Poland may have been fired by a Russian-made anti-missile system.  Ukraine has many relatively sophisticated Russian anti-missile batteries, dating back to the time when it was part of the Soviet Union.  The most prevalent Russian system, the S-300, was introduced into the Soviet arsenal in 1983.  More powerful versions of the S-300 were introduced in 1993 and could be in use by Ukraine today because Russia has continued to produce versions of the S-300 for export.  Ukraine kept the earlier S-300’s they had from Soviet days and may have bought the new versions after the break-up of the Soviet Union when Ukraine became a state 1991.  Ukraine voted on its statehood in that year by referendum. 

Anti-missile systems are inherently complicated and difficult to use, especially when multiple missiles have been fired by an enemy and have been timed to hit a target simultaneously.  The S-300 system has two parts:  A launcher loaded with two rockets mounted in a tracked vehicle chassis, and a radar system, mounted on a separate tracked chassis. The radar and missile vehicles are typically set up near each other.  The radar array, once erected, tracks incoming enemy missiles and fires and guides the S-300 anti-missile missile.  Some versions of the S-300 have different capabilities.  There is one model capable of locating and tracking multiple incoming missiles that are up to 180 miles away.  Another model can pick up enemy missiles about 100 miles out.  The various models of the S-300 can carry warheads that weigh as much as 300 pounds, or as little as 60 pounds.  The missiles have a range of about 60 miles and can hit targets up to an altitude of 20 miles. 

That is, if they hit the incoming missile.