Russia accuses Ukraine of shooting down military plane with 65 prisoners of war – Liberation

A plane crashed this Wednesday, January 24, in the Russian region of Belgorod, which borders Ukraine. Moscow says it was targeted by a missile fired by a German-made Ukrainian anti-aircraft system.

Surprisingly, Kiev and Moscow do not tell the same story. On Wednesday morning, a Russian Il-76 military plane crashed in the Belgorod region, bordering Ukraine. With on board, “65 prisoners of the Ukrainian army, transported to the Belgorod region for exchange, six crew members and three attendants,” The Russian Defense Ministry hastened to make the announcement, accusing the Ukrainian regime in Kiev “Committed a terrorist act by shooting down a Russian military transport plane.”

According to Moscow, the Ukrainian army “knew perfectly well” that the Russians would transport the Ukrainian prisoners by air to Belgorod and then to a meeting point at the border. So the Ukrainians decided to humiliate the Russians by launching missiles from the Kharkiv region (north-east). “An anti-aircraft defense system”. According to the chairman of the defense committee in the Duma, the Russian parliament, the plane was shot down by three missiles from the German-made Patriot or Iris-T surface-to-air system. Some Ukrainian media claimed, for their part, that the Russian plane was carrying S-300 missiles and that Ukrainian defense forces actually shot it down before retreating.

without providing evidence

In images circulating on social networks, we see a plane falling almost vertically and in a huge explosion, a mushroom cloud of fire and black smoke rising into the sky. But nothing on these few-second shots allows us to say that the plane was shot down mid-flight by a missile, various observers point out. or to invalidate it for that matter. However, the Russians were quick to accuse the Ukrainians “terrorism” And the enormity of the allegations – “They killed their own soldiers in the air”, Launches the President of the Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, by assuring, without providing evidence, that “American and German Missiles” was used – invoke caution immediately.

Quickly, new elements further confused Moscow’s version: the plane was not heading towards the Ukrainian border, but in the opposite direction, towards the interior of Russia. According to Mark Voyager, former special adviser on Russian affairs for the US Army in Europe, “We can definitely rule out that the plane was carrying prisoners of war”, Because the expensive model is commonly used by the Russian Air Defense.

Authenticity not confirmed

Then Russian propagandist and RT editor-in-chief, the ever-frightening Margarita Simonyan, published a list of 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war who she claimed were aboard the Il-76. No one has confirmed the authenticity of the list, but some media outlets have pointed out that some of the names appearing in it were already circulating in the public space. Moreover, according to the Telegram channel “Mariupol Now”, at least 17 prisoners mentioned in Simonyan’s list have returned to Ukraine as part of the exchange on January 3.

At the end of the day, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Army published a press release which did not directly mention the incident, but which repeated the elements presented earlier in the Ukrainian media, including on the presence of plane shells dropped for S- 300 surface-to-air missile systems. In the same text, the army also promised to continue “Destroy delivery vehicles and control airspace to eliminate terrorist threat including Belgorod-Kharkiv area” To fight Russian strikes in Ukraine. Ukrainian military intelligence also confirmed that a prisoner exchange was planned for January 24. Denying Russian allegations about Il-76 passengers. “Currently, we do not have reliable and complete information about the people on board the plane and their numbers,” The General Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine said in a statement.