“On the night of April 19, two Tu-22M3s took off from Mozdok, each of which had three Kh-22 missiles on board. The planes flew to the Black Sea, reaching the level of Sevastopol, a little further from Tarkhankut, and fired the missiles. Two of these missiles were shot down. Then these bombers turned and flew to Mozdok, but one of them did not reach there,” the expert said.
According to him, it has been officially confirmed that the plane was shot down by a modernized Soviet missile from the 1960s, which at the time was being developed to shoot down American strategic bombers.
“Nevertheless, all experts stood up, including me, asking: because I did not understand how a stationary S-200 launcher could be masked or concreted, since the missile weighs about 7 tons and is 11 m long,” Krivolap added.
The aviation expert noted that during the tests of the transport aircraft developed by the Antonov “Ruslan” design bureau, it was necessary to insert the fuselage of this aircraft into the hydraulic pool. Therefore, an exact time was chosen for this operation so that the passengers were not in a certain area.
“And all the media are saying it was shot down by an S-200 missile. I believe if our intelligence says it’s called ‘S-200,’ then we’re going to say it’s an S-200. The main thing is what conclusions can be drawn from this, not what this missile is called and what they used to shoot it down. In my opinion, the main thing is that Ukraine has shown its constant ability to shoot down aircraft such as the Tu-22M3 strategic missile carrier, although it is not quite strategic because it does not have a range,” Krivolap emphasized.
He also recalled that an A-50U was shot down earlier, so we can say that Ukraine has a weapon that can reach such a distance.
“The options for this weapon are limited. There are missiles from the anti-aircraft ship complex SM-6 and some modifications of the Aster 30 from the NASAMS complex, but we do not use a Western weapon to operate on Russian territory, and the plane fell in the Stavropol region in a spin, something the engine was wrong, Ukraine is already among the advanced countries that have air defense systems capable of striking at a distance of more than 300 km,” the expert concluded.
