Ukraine war
Russian plane crashed – prisoners of war on board?
A model of the Ilyushin Il-76 heavy transport aircraft (archive image). photo
© Sergei Grits/AP/dpa
Another tragedy has occurred in Russia’s 700-day-old war of aggression against Ukraine – one with many mysteries. Moscow claims that Ukraine shot down its own people.
A Russian military transport plane is at the border Ukraine crashed. All 74 people on board the Ilyushin Il-76 were killed, the Russian Defense Ministry said. The plane was shot down by Ukraine.
There is no independent information as to who or what the plane was transporting. According to the Defense Ministry in Moscow, there were 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war on board who were to be flown for an exchange. There were also six crew members and three accompanying persons on the plane. There was initially no confirmation of this information.
Ukraine did not comment on possible prisoners on the plane. However, according to a report in Ukrayinska Pravda in Kiev, it was confirmed that a prisoner exchange was planned. The news portal relied on its own sources. A video is circulating on social media that is said to show the moment of the crash. A detonation can be seen at a great distance, after which a huge black-gray cloud rises into the sky. The crash was also confirmed by the Ukrainian side.
Conflicting information from Kyiv
The Ilyushin was shot down by Ukraine with Western anti-aircraft weapons, the Russian Defense Ministry said. The head of the Defense Committee in the Russian Parliament, Andrei Kartapolov, made the same comments in Moscow. Conflicting information came from Kiev. Information about a shooting was removed from an initial report by Ukrayinska Pravda. It was said that the Ukrainian military suspected that the plane was carrying supplies of Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missiles.
Then the Interfax Ukraina agency, citing military sources, reported that a plane had been shot down – but after it took off from Belgorod. According to Russian information, the crash site was near Jablonowo. This is located 50 kilometers northeast of Belgorod and about 50 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
Accusations from Moscow: Kyiv knew about it
The Russian defense politician Kartapolov made serious allegations against Ukraine. “The Ukrainian leadership was well aware of the planned prisoner exchange and was informed about how the prisoners would be transported,” he said. He did not provide any evidence for his allegations.
According to him, the prisoners of war were flown in the plane to a planned exchange. Another Il-76 aircraft with 80 more prisoners on board turned around after being shot down. In total there was supposed to be an exchange of 192 prisoners, which has now failed. Russian propagandist Margarita Simonyan published a list on Telegram with 65 names of the alleged Ukrainian prisoners on board.
Duma head plans to submit a submission to the Bundestag
According to Kartapolov, the military aircraft was brought down by three anti-aircraft missiles from either the US Patriot system or the German Iris-T system. The Russian Defense Ministry said that two rocket launches had been detected. The launch site was near Lipzy in the Kharkiv region of eastern Ukraine, about 100 kilometers from the crash site. Duma head Vyacheslav Volodin announced a submission to the Bundestag and the US Congress. The step should make parliamentarians aware of who they are helping with their arms deliveries, said Volodin.
However, at least the officially stated range of the Iris-T is less than the distance to the border. Experts also doubt that Ukraine has positioned the expensive anti-aircraft systems directly on the border, where they are easy for other Russian weapon systems to combat.
Ukraine is reminiscent of Russian disinformation campaigns
The Ukrainian Coordination Staff for Prisoners of War Affairs did not comment on the allegations. All information is being collected and analyzed, the staff said on Telegram. Citizens should wait for official notifications. At the same time, the staff emphasized that Russia was conducting special disinformation campaigns against Ukraine “in order to destabilize Ukrainian society.”
Ukraine has been fending off a large-scale Russian invasion for almost two years – this Wednesday marks the 700th day since the invasion. During fighting in July 2014, pro-Russian gunmen shot down what appeared to be a Ukrainian fighter jet over eastern Ukraine. In fact, a civilian plane from Malaysia was hit, killing 298 passengers.