Russian troops were in for a major letdown: the Patriot air defense system they claimed to have hit near Kharkiv turned out to be a very professionally made mock-up.
Ukraine’s Defense Forces once again outfoxed the aggressor. The Patriot surface-to-air missile system that Russians had been boasting about destroying over the past week was in fact a decoy, acknowledged by Russianwar correspondent Mikhail Podolyaka on his Telegram channel.
In early January, Russian war channels published video of a drone strike on a “Patriot -specifically, its AN/MPQ-53 radar and launchers - somewhere near Kharkiv. Kremlin propagandists cheered the hit on such a “high-value target.”
But the celebration lasted only a week. After closely reviewing the strike footage, Podolyaka concluded Russia’s forces had been duped. He pointed to several extra support struts on the vehicles, a different tow hitch on the radar, missing hatches and grilles on the generator, and other discrepancies.
Podolyaka was impressed by the quality of the Ukrainian-made decoy.
“It was the high-quality mock-ups that fell victim to ‘Rubicon.’ They are made so well that any differences from a real MIM-104 Patriot had to be searched for literally with a magnifying glass, which makes it almost impossible for an operator to recognize the deception at the moment of the strike or during visual reconnaissance,” Podolyaka wrote.
Ukraine’s Forces actively deploy decoys of expensive weapons at the front. Such fakes cost
