Why’d France Informally Confirm That A US Patriot Missile Downed Russia’s IL-76 Last Month? By Andrew Korybko

The U.S. government may have supplied the missile system to its ally, Ukraine, which Ukraine then used to deliberately shoot down a Russian plane transporting Ukrainian POWS back to Ukraine as part of a prisoner exchange. It doesn’t get much more depraved than that. From Andrew Korybko at korybko.substack.com:

It’s hugely embarrassing that a leading NATO member believes that a US-provided missile system was used by Ukraine to shoot down a Russian plane full of its own POWs, which raises tough questions that both would prefer not to answer.

The Associated Press reported on Friday that France concluded that a US Patriot missile downed the Russian IL-76 plane last month that was carrying over five dozen Ukrainian POWs at the time. Their source also added that this American-provided system surreptitiously crept close to the border in the run-up to the attack and then only turned its radar on “just long enough to hit them.” This aligns with Russia’s official findings and can be interpreted as independent confirmation of the former’s veracity.

It’s already astounding enough that fellow NATO member France would undercut the bloc’s American leader like that, but it’s even more surprising because this happened in the aftermath of Russia dealing a powerful blow to France’s prestige in Ukraine by killing dozens of its mercenaries there. Paris therefore wasn’t expected to do Moscow a soft power favor by backing its claims about this attack, even if only indirectly via the Associated Press and national media prior to that, which leads to questions of its intent.

RT reported that a French missile was initially thought to have been responsible for what happened even though that theory has since been dispelled, but it might have been these suspicions that prompted Paris to thoroughly investigate the matter and leak its findings to the press to protect its reputation. After all, the country had yet to fully recover from the aforementioned blow that Russia dealt to its prestige, so policymakers probably didn’t want another one to follow so soon thereafter.

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