 Russian A-50 and IL-22 planes were trapped. Forbes. On January the 14th, Ukraine shut down one of the very rare and very valuable A-50 airborne early warning aircraft of the Russian Air Force. As a result of the same attack, the Russian IL-22 command aircraft was damaged. According to Forbes, it is not yet clear how exactly the plane was shut down, but according to analyst Tom Cooper, Ukrainian radar and rocket crews leared the Russian crews into a trap. It is noted that Ukrainian Air Force aircraft struck Russian facilities in the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula. As a result, Cooper notes, several radars were disabled. The last strikes, the latest in a long campaign of Ukrainian raids on Russian defenses in Crimea, suppressed the Russian's ground-based radar coverage, leaving the surviving missile batteries on the peninsula partially blind, especially to the north, where the terrain could mask incoming Ukrainian planes, drones and missiles. So Russian commanders did the obvious, but stupid thing. They ordered one of their few remaining A-50U radar planes, which normally fly far to the south over the Sea of Azov, to push farther north to extend radar coverage over most of Crimea. Forbes writes, satellite imagery and radar data seem to place the A-50's northern-most flight path over occupied Berdiansk just 75 miles from the front line. This is within the reach of the Patriot Air Defense System. All Ukrainians had to do was to secretly deploy a suitable SAM system to target the two aircraft from long range. Cooper writes, perhaps this was one of the S-300 SAM systems. Perhaps one of the PAC two-stroke three SAM systems. It is also possible that Ukrainians have deployed a launcher and radar plus power supply equipment from one of their three PAC two-stroke three SAM systems in combination with one of their S-300 radars. And then the Ukrainians began to launch missiles, destroying the A-50 and damaging the IL-22.