DISINFO: Zelenskyy planned to bomb Moscow with Patriot US missiles
SUMMARY
Vladimir Putin has slammed plans by Volodymyr Zelenskyy to attack Moscow with Western Patriot anti-aircraft missile systems, according to Chinese newspaper Sohu.
“At the end of April, Ukraine received the first batch of US-made Patriot SAMs, which naturally delighted Volodymyr Zelenskyy – he had been waiting for this SAM for a long time and hoped to use it. He was going to mercilessly attack Russia,” the article says.
However, according to Chinese observers, things did not go according to Kiev’s plan. Russian troops used a hypersonic Kinzhal missile to bombard an air defence installation handed over by the US.
“This incident had a very big impact on Russia and Ukraine, which were directly involved in the conflict, but it also hurt the US, the country of production of this air defence system”.
RESPONSE
Pro-Kremlin narrative attempting to switch the roles of the aggressor and defender, portraying the bombing of the Ukrainian capital as defence against alleged anti-Russian aggression.
The PATRIOT is a surface-to-air guided air and missile defence system currently in use worldwide, including in several NATO countries (e.g Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States). PATRIOT stands for “Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target”. Some systems were transferred by the US to Ukraine to defend important infrastructure and cities like Kyiv where a system was partly damaged by a Kinzhal Russian missile on 16 May 2023.
Although two components were damaged, the system was never offline and remained functional throughout the attack, according to US officials. Ukrainian forces communicated that six Russian Kinzhal missiles were intercepted that night. It was the first time Ukraine had claimed to have struck an entire volley of multiple Kinzhal missiles, and if confirmed, would be a demonstration of the effectiveness of its newly deployed Western air defences.
The PATRIOT system is not aimed at bombing targets on the ground, but even if it was diverted from its original mission the missile range is only 60-70 km while Kyiv is at a distance of 755 km from Moscow, rendering the alleged “Zelenskyy plans” to bomb Moscow from a PATRIOT battery in Kyiv absurd.
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