Ukraine rules out that prisoners of war were traveling on the downed Russian military plane

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry assures that the Russian military aircraft that crashed on Wednesday in the Russian province of Belgorod was not transporting prisoners of war.

Moscow claims that that Il-76 plane was shot down by Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles and that 65 Ukrainian soldiers were being transported on it for a prisoner exchange that was to take place that same day.

Andrii Yusov, spokesman for the Intelligence Services of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (GUR), assured this Thursday that they only have evidence that there were five crew members on the aircraft, the only bodies that entered the morgue, according to their version. .

The GUR confirmed on Wednesday that a prisoner exchange was due to take place that day, but that the Russian side canceled it because the Ukrainian military allegedly lost their lives on the plane.

Yusov has assured in an interview on Radio Svoboda that, in reality, the crashed plane was supposed to carry prominent Russian political and military representatives, but that at the last moment the Security Services (the FSB) prevented them from boarding.

The Il-76 took off from Belgorod with only five crew members, according to the GUR.

This coincides with information published on Wednesday morning by the Ukrainian news agency Interfax, according to which the Ukrainian army shot down the plane as it left Belgorod airport.

Interfax, like the Ukrinform agency and the

Pravda

newspaper ,

They cited sources from the General Staff and the Ministry of Defense that indicated that the aircraft was transporting weapons, specifically S-300 missiles.

Yusov has not ruled out that the plane also carried units of these anti-aircraft rockets.

The GUR and the president himself, Volodymyr Zelensky, transmitted messages on Wednesday that assumed the possibility that the prisoners of war were on the Il-76.

Defense intelligence services stressed that Moscow had not followed the usual protocols for reporting the arrival of an aircraft carrying prisoners.

“Perhaps we are talking about planned and deliberate actions by Russia with the aim of destabilizing the situation in Ukraine and weakening its international support,” the GUR said in a statement.

Zelensky denounced that Russia "is playing with the lives of prisoners, with the feelings of their families and the emotions of Ukrainian society."

The president called for an international investigation to clarify what happened.

The Security Services of Ukraine (SSU), belonging to the Ministry of the Interior, have opened a criminal investigation to determine the whereabouts of the prisoners and to evaluate whether Russia has failed to comply with international law, which requires the State to guarantee the security of prisoners. that keeps them imprisoned.

Yusov has explained that, according to the information collected by the GUR in Belgorod – a province neighboring Ukraine and heavily infiltrated by its agents – the Russian FSB prevented civilian emergency services personnel from accessing the scene of the accident.

The Ukrainian Ombudsman, Dmitro Lubinets, has delved into the lack of evidence provided by Russia on the veracity of the prisoners' deaths.

In an interview on state television news, Lubinets has indicated that, based on the information collected so far, it cannot be certain that dozens of people were flown on the Il-76: “We cannot affirm that there were prisoners of war.

Based on the analysis of the photos and videos that have emerged;

"If there were corpses, if the Russians had provided images or videos of our prisoners, they would have used them."

Lubinets has stressed the theory that the plane had landed in Belgorod, loaded material and took off.

The shootdown, therefore, would not have occurred while approaching the province bordering Ukraine to carry out the exchange, as stated by the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov.

Russia maintains that the aircraft was transporting prisoners of war and has called an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to address the catastrophe, which will be held this Thursday.

In the almost two years of war, Ukraine and Russia have carried out 48 prisoner exchanges that have allowed more than 2,800 Ukrainians to return to their homes, according to their Government.

Russia has not made public the total number of its returned military personnel.

A total of 51 imprisoned Ukrainian prisoners died in July 2022 in a bombing on the facilities where they were held, in Donetsk province.

Both countries accused each other of being responsible for the attack.

kyiv and Moscow agreed with the United Nations and Turkey on an independent international investigation to determine what happened, but finally the Russian side withdrew from the agreement.

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