The Russian Missile Strike on Poland: Not a Ukrainian Mistake
It Looks like A "Reverse False Flag" Is Going On
This errant SAM story is very unlikely to be true. For starters, if the missile had been a Ukrainian SAM, Zelensky would have been aware of what happened and started to do damage control immediately in order to maintain Poland’s support and avoid false flag accusations: He would not have issued a statement about a "serious escalation." One must remember that SAM systems are designed to be tracked—it is very unlikely one would have simply disappeared into Poland without Ukraine knowing. Indeed, now that NATO has produced its cover story, Ukraine is asking for access to the site: Something that suggests to me that they do not really believe the story Washington has concocted to give Russia a pass on this egregious mistake.
Second, the S300 is a pretty capable system that has never had an accident like this occur in its entire operational history. If incidents like this were at all common, where are the other examples of S300’s landing on Ukrainian soil by mistake? Of course, S300’s land on Ukrainian soil all the time, but they are being fired from Belarus or Russia. Yet, when an S300 lands on Polish territory, NATO wants us to believe the explanation must be something that happens very, very rarely if at all—not the thing that happens every day, namely Russian S300’s landing on Ukraine because Russia was using them as surface to surface weapons.
Third, the S300 system generally has an altimeter fuse that ensures the missile goes off before hitting the ground when it is configured for the SAM role. This functionality has to be explicitly turned off in order to allow the missile to hit ground targets. Ukraine would never have intentionally turned this functionality off given how close some of these SAM systems are to their largest and most important cities. Russia, on the other hand, would have if they were using S300s in their auxiliary role as surface to surface missiles.
Fourth, look at the size of that crater. Now an S300 does not carry a warhead large enough to do that sort of damage; at least, not the ones Ukraine has been using as SAMs: The S300s Ukraine has been using carry a warhead meant to damage a plane or incoming missile, something around 300 pounds. This blast looks like it was caused by something between 800-1000 pounds. So, that too makes it hard to believe that this was an errant SAM. However, if Russia were using the S300 in a surface to surface role, they could easily be using a warhead on the larger end of its carrying capacity.
Fifth, Ukraine's S300 systems would not be pointed in the direction of Poland: But rather towards Russia or Belarus. However, Russia has been using S300s to hit ground targets. In short, Russia is the power that would have its S300s "pointed that way." Sixth, and this is perhaps the most intriguing piece of evidence, the village hit, strangely enough, has Kiev's latitude and Lyiv's longitude: I have trouble believing that is a coincidence. To my mind, that suggests a typological error, and many Russian missiles do have their firing coordinates input manually.
Kyiv/Coordinates 50.4501° N, 30.5234°E
Lviv/Coordinates 49.842957 ° N, 24.031111° E
Impact site geolocated to 50.2828, 23.5519
You can judge for yourself. The impact site is shown below.
This was, most likely, a typographical error that caused the missile to land in NATO territory. The target hit makes no sense if Russia did this intentionally, a small grain facility is not worth spending a missile on, but the NATO cover story makes little sense either.
[Is there perhaps some legalism in Biden's response? Yes, maybe it is unlikely the missile fired from Russia, but what if it fired from Belarus? That is some Bill Clinton "what does 'is' mean" level stuff.]
[You can dismiss all theories about being a Ukrainian false flag. The trajectory of an S300 missile could easily be deduced from a number of factors including radar records. It is far to easily traced. Similarly, it is unlikely the Russians did this intentionally given the complete lack of strategic value in the target hit.]
Ryan McBeth also does not believe the errant SAM theory, though his thinking is somewhat different.