As of: January 25, 2024, 2:36 p.m
By: Felix Busjaeger
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An Ilyushin IL-76 transport plane lands at the airfield.
A Russian military transport plane carrying more than 70 people reportedly crashed over the Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine on Wednesday.
© Azhar Rahim/EPA/dpa
A plane crashed in Russia.
It is unclear what exactly happened.
The Kremlin is taking advantage of the situation and looking for the culprits in Ukraine.
Moscow/Kiev – A tragic incident in the Ukraine war poses a mystery.
On Wednesday, January 24, a Russian military transport plane crashed on the Ukrainian border, according to the Defense Ministry.
All 74 people on board the Ilyushin Il-76 are said to have died.
The exact circumstances are still uncertain.
However, the Russian government claims that Ukraine shot down the plane, which was also said to have been carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Investigations should now shed light on this claim.
An overview of the facts known so far.
Crash in Russia: What is known about the plane accident near Belgorod
The information situation remains unclear even a day after the plane crashed near Belgorod: There is no independent information about the plane's passengers or cargo.
The cause of the crash of the Russian plane has not yet been clarified.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj called for an international investigation into the incident in a speech on Wednesday evening.
Moscow's claim that Ukrainian prisoners of war were on board the crashed Russian plane and are now dead has not been confirmed by Kiev.
Ukrainian military intelligence announced the following: “At present, we do not have reliable and comprehensive information about who exactly and how many were on board the aircraft.” The Russian Defense Ministry reported shortly after the crash that there were 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war on board the aircraft .
The Ukrainians only confirmed that a prisoner exchange was planned, but it did not take place.
Ukrainian military intelligence HUR added: “According to the agreement, the Russian side had to ensure the safety of our defenders.
At the same time, the Ukrainian side was not informed about the need to ensure the safety of the airspace in the area […].”
Plane crash in Russia: Authorities speak of dead prisoners of war
Experts from the
US Institute for War Studies
(ISW) in Washington said about the plane crash in Russia that neither the Russian nor the Ukrainian information could be independently verified.
The day after the plane crashed, Russian authorities released the names of the killed pilot and five other crew members.
“This is an irreparable loss for everyone.
Our condolences go out to the families and friends of the heroes,” the Orenburg region authorities wrote on Thursday.
A list of names and dates of birth of the 65 alleged Ukrainian soldiers was also published in Russian state media.
However, there are doubts about this.
It cannot be verified whether there were actually prisoners of war from Ukraine on the plane.
Shortly after the first reports of the accident,
the news portal
Ukrayinska Pravda reported that the Ukrainian military suspected supplies of Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missiles in the plane.
Information about possible reasons for the crash was later removed, according to news agencies.
The plane crash site is probably near the town of Jablonowo, almost 50 kilometers northeast of Belgorod.
As the
Tagesschau
writes based on information from the Russian state news agency
RIA Novosti
, the accident probably occurred around 11 a.m. local time (9 a.m. CET).
Reason for plane crash in Russia uncertain: anti-aircraft defense suspected
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, also made a similar statement in Moscow.
After the crash, he explained that the military aircraft had been brought down from the sky with 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.
According to the German Press Agency, however, the range of the Iris-T is less than the distance from Ukraine to the crash site.
Experts also doubt that Ukraine has set up the expensive anti-aircraft systems right on the border, where they are easy for Russia to combat.
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“It has not yet been fully clarified what happened; investigators only began examining the remains of the plane yesterday,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday, according to Russian agencies.
Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin was informed by the military, it said.
There should therefore only be a reaction when open questions have been clarified.
For this purpose, the seized flight recorders should also be evaluated, as state media in Moscow reported.
Russia uses plane crash to sow distrust in the Ukraine war
According to an analysis by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the reason for Russia's current public emphasis on the fates of those presumably killed is obvious: the Russian government would use the plane crash to instill mistrust of its own government in Kiev in the Ukrainian to sow society.
In particular, the question of the exchange of prisoners of war is a sensitive issue that arouses emotions among both Ukrainians and Russians.
Videos show plane crash in Russia: Military target shot down in Ukraine war?
The American magazine
Forbes
also reported on the plane crash and presented an alternative account of events.
According to this report, Russia had no way to deny the incident because there were several video recordings.
These could prove a possible rocket attack and presumably refute reports of a prisoner exchange.
A video from the crash site is said to show a lot of rubble - but few bodies.
In addition, a list of prisoners who, according to Russia, were on board the Il-76 contains names of Ukrainian prisoners of war who have already been exchanged.
Forbes
interprets the video evidence as an indication of the actual shooting down of a legitimate military target.
The magazine also states that Ukraine could reach targets over Belgorod with its air defenses.
A slow-flying transport aircraft loaded with equipment for the front may therefore have been an attractive target for the defenders.
However, this version cannot be independently verified either.
Expert on plane crash in Russia: propaganda from the Kremlin
Military expert Nico Lange also told the
Tagesspiegel
his suspicion that the shoot-down was caused by anti-aircraft defenses - although he sees Russian systems as the cause.
“Russian S-300 systems have been repeatedly active in the Russian area in question in recent weeks.
Activities of Patriot, Iris-T or other modern Western systems owned by Ukraine have not been observed there so far,” the expert explained.
Lange also interprets Russia's statements about the plane crash as a quick attempt to take advantage of the accident as much as possible due to inconsistencies in the names of those presumably killed.
“The story that Ukraine shot down its own prisoners of war sounds a lot like Russian propaganda.”
The editor wrote this article and then used an AI language model for optimization at his own discretion. All information has been carefully checked.
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