Interview with a military expert
Reisner: The rocket couldn’t have come from Russia
11/16/2022 12:33 p.m
Both sides are using S-300 missiles, which fell in Poland on Tuesday. For military historian Markus Reisner from the Theresian Military Academy in Vienna it was nevertheless very quickly clear that it could not have been fired from Russia.
When US President Biden publicly speculated that it was probably a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile, one had to be sure behind the scenes, right?
It was clear relatively early on that this rocket was probably not launched from Russia. Photos were available very soon after the impact, and the debris can be assigned to an S300 anti-aircraft missile. That alone would not prove anything, because the type is in use on both sides. The Russians misappropriated the S300 as a surface-to-surface missile. But the decisive factor is that the missile only has a limited range, in contrast to an Iskander missile, for example.
You wouldn’t even get to Poland from Russia?
Russia is far too far away. Since the impact site is eight kilometers from the Polish-Ukrainian border, the rocket must have been fired in western Ukraine. Theoretically, it could also have been deployed from the south-western part of Belarus, but this is unlikely. This impact can be seen in the context of a Russian airstrike on an object near the Polish border. This object was protected by Ukrainian anti-aircraft defenses, and one of these missiles apparently deviated from the intercept course.
Colonel Markus Reisner is a military historian and head of the research and development department at the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt. He has analyzed the war in Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion.
(Photo: Screenshot)
Will the rubble dispel any doubts?
When the on-site rescue crews collect the debris, inscriptions and stampings will be revealed. This shows which production installment is involved and whether this installment was used in Ukraine or in Russia. With this information, it’s pretty clear where a rocket came from.
Is Poland in danger of such an incident repeating itself in the coming weeks? The village where the rockets landed is only 60 kilometers as the crow flies from Lviv, which was under heavy Russian fire yesterday.
Lviv is the central hub for supply from the west to the east. That’s why the city remains a key target for Russian attacks designed to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure. What is overlooked: Parallel to the attacks in Poland, Ukraine experienced massive air raids by the Russian armed forces yesterday, of a quality that we have not seen before. About 100 ballistic missiles, drones and cruise missiles were deployed.
That overwhelms the Ukrainian air defense?
Ukraine’s air defenses have been deployed since the beginning of the war and are running out of ammunition to repel these attacks. Russia is trying to attack the Achilles’ heel here. And so vehemently because Moscow is only still able to act in the short and medium term in the area of air attacks. This creates the paradoxical situation that Ukraine is achieving a lot at the tactical-operational level, that is, on the front line, but is on the defensive at the strategic level.
Due to the attacks on the power grid and on critical infrastructure, this bombardment seems to affect Ukraine almost more than the situation on the front line.
There are indications that a negotiated settlement is being sought behind the scenes between Russia and the US, which Ukraine is currently denying. Moscow and Washington deny this, but evidence points in this direction. Russia wants to put pressure on these attacks – on the Ukrainian people and on the West. The more the population suffers, the more they would urge the government in Kyiv to start negotiations. That is the calculation of the Russians.
Frauke Niemeyer spoke to Markus Reisner