One other point. It hasn’t been clear what the earlier hit was with, but the articles were speculating that it was a Patriot. This one was 200 miles from the front line. I don’t think that the Patriot can reach 200 miles, though (though the A-50 was presumably flying away from whatever hit it, and that might move the crash a bit further away from the impact point). It’s just outside the rated range for an S-200, and that’s if the launcher were right on the front lines.

Also, from some of the footage here, assuming that it is indeed of the incident:

https://sopuli.xyz/post/9517353

…it looks like the A-50 was dropping flares before it was hit (if that’s what those falling points of light were). So I assume that the A-50 crew knew that something was heading their way for some time in advance, and was presumably trying to fly away from it.

I don’t know why they’d be dropping flares for what is presumably a radar seeker – that would be a counter to a missile with an infrared seeker, probably a short-range missile – but maybe it’s standard operating procedure for the Russian Air Force to drop flares or something if an A-50 is targeted by anything.

Both the S-200 and Patriot use radar seekers.

There are drones that are capable of launching infrared missiles – like, the Reaper can launch an infrared Stinger or infrared Sidewinder. I don’t know if Ukrainian special forces have access to some kind of small drone that they could smuggle into Russian territory that could fire an infrared missile.