Retired Lieutenant General Bizhev: APU missile that fell in Poland was supposed to self-destruct

“Judging by the photographs, an anti-aircraft guided missile 5V55 flew to Poland.

These missiles were developed in the late 1970s for the S-300P complex.

As of 1993, there were about three thousand 5V55 missiles on the territory of Ukraine.

The maximum service life of 5V55, taking into account all possible extensions of the resource, cannot exceed 35 years.

The missiles did not undergo proper maintenance, were stored in poor conditions.

Their systems did not pass diagnostics,” Bizhev said.

He recalled that the rocket fell near the village of Przewoduv in the Lubelskie Voivodeship.

“The nearest probable position of the S-300P complex, from which the rocket may have launched, is located near the city of Kamenka-Bugskaya, Lviv region.

The 540th anti-aircraft missile regiment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is located there.

In a straight line, the distance from Kamenka-Bugskaya to the crash site is about 50 km.

One of the units of this regiment was in the Chervonograd region.

From there to the crash site - no more than 25 km, ”said the lieutenant general.

For ground targets, the S-300P operates at about 70 km, he stressed.

“Obviously, the calculation of the anti-aircraft complex simply did not have time to hit our missile and gave a blind attack,” Bizhev said, adding that the Ukrainian anti-missile lost the Russian missile and went “into milk.”

At the same time, the Ukrainian missile was supposed to self-destruct, but this did not happen, the source said.

“A possible reason is that the rocket, as I said, was old, did not undergo proper maintenance.

Another possible reason is that the 5V55 modifications were used in the 540th regiment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on which the 23Yu6 device, which is responsible for the self-destruction of the missile when it misses, was not installed at all.

As a result, civilians died,” Bizhev concluded.

Earlier, Polish President Andrzej Duda said that there is no evidence that a rocket that fell on Polish territory was fired by the Russian military.

At the same time, he noted that there is a high probability that the missile that fell on the territory of the country belonged to the Ukrainian air defense forces.

The Russian Ministry of Defense stated that the Russian Armed Forces did not strike targets near the Polish-Ukrainian border, and the statements of the Polish media and officials about the fall of "Russian" missiles are a provocation.