Edited by Deepali Verma
Kyiv has been accused by Moscow of shooting down a military transport plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war, which crashed near Russia’s border with Ukraine on the morning of January 24.
Russia’s defence ministry said all 74 people onboard the Il-76 plane died which consisted of 65 Ukrainian soldiers being transported for a prisoner exchange from Moscow to the Belgorod region of Russia — the Russian border province that has faced the most spillover from President Vladimir Putin’s nearly two-year invasion.
Six crew members as well as the three Russian service personnel in the company of the prisoners were also among the passengers, according to the defence ministry.
Telegram, a social media platform, posted a video of a plane banking sharply near a village before bursting into a ball of flame as it hit the ground. Trails of an alleged anti-aircraft fire were visible in the sky behind, while the plane was on fire before crashing.
Moscow has accused the Kyiv’s forces of shooting down the plane to sabotage the PoW exchange “with the goal of accusing Russia of eliminating Ukrainian soldiers”.
Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence unit said Russia has assumed responsibility for the safe transport of Ukrainian PoWs and Kyiv should have received a prior notification if they were on board.
“We do not have concrete information about who exactly was on board,” GUR said, adding: “the Ukrainian side received zero information about the need to guarantee the safety of airspace in the area of Belgorod, as was repeated practice in the past”.
Russia’s failure to do so, GUR suggests that the incident amounts to a “planned and deliberate action with the aim of creating chaos in the situation in Ukraine”.
Ukraine’s general staff, issued a cryptic statement post the crash, saying it would continue to target Russian military transport planes in the Belgorod region given that they deliver missiles used to target the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
“The armed forces of Ukraine will continue to take measures to hamper the delivery means, control the airspace to destroy the terrorist threat, including in the Belgorod-Kharkov direction,” read the statement.
Zelenskyy said in his night-time address on January 24 that his top intelligence and security officials were engaged in gathering the facts and that he would call for an “international investigation”.
“Facts is the keyword now,” he said, suggesting Kyiv had yet to determine whether Ukrainian PoWs were on board. “Our state will insist on an international investigation.”
Russia’s 700th day of war was referred to as a ” very difficult day”, Zelenskyy remarked as he began it by conducting a meeting of top officials to discuss the downing and the prisoner exchange that was scheduled on January 24 but was cancelled.
“It is obvious that the Russians played with the lives of Ukrainian prisoners, with their relatives’ feelings and with the emotions of our society,” he said. “It is crucial to mark all explicit facts. As much as possible, given that the plane crash took place on Russian territory —outside of our control.”
Andriy Yusov, a GUR officer, informed the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Ukrainian service in Kyiv that an exchange had been scheduled for January 24 but was suspended following the crash. When contacted by the FT, Yusov did not confirm Kyiv had shot down the plane with its air defences and declined to comment until his office could verify details.
So far, all the prisoner swaps between the warring sides are carried out at a small crossing that connects the Russian village of Kolotilovka, in Belgorod region, and the village of Pokrovka, in Ukraine’s Sumy region. The plane crash happened at about 150 km east of the crossing.
The largest swap between Ukraine and Russia happened on January 3, when 230 Ukrainians were released in exchange for 248 Russians, as per each country’s defence officials. It was the first such exchange since August because of what Zelenskyy termed as “Russia-related” reasons. In December, he remarked that the talks over exchanges were “complicated”.
