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- Russia on Wednesday accused Kyiv of shooting down a military transport plane, killing all 74 people on board including 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war. The flight was on its way to the southern region of Belgorod ahead of a prisoner exchange at the border when it was brought down by a "terrorist act," the Kremlin said.
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Jan 24, 2024 · Russia accused Ukraine of downing a military plane near the Ukrainian border Wednesday, saying all 74 people on board were killed including dozens of Ukrainian service members being transported...
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- Messing with the lives of Ukrainian captives
- Battling in the skies
KYIV, Ukraine — More than 24 hours after a military transport plane’s fiery crash into the snowy fields of a Russian border region, there were still more questions than answers in an episode that has already proved deadly and damaging for Ukraine.
The Kremlin accuses Kyiv of shooting the plane down, knowing 65 of its own prisoners of war were on board. Ukraine has so far not directly confirmed nor flatly denied the accusation, while calling for an international investigation.
It remains to be seen exactly who was on board, what brought the plane down, and where this fits in the high-stakes information battle that has seen claim and counterclaim in the nearly two years since Russia's full-scale invasion.
The incident comes at a particularly crucial moment for Kyiv, which is struggling to retain Western support and attention. With fighting across the war’s front lines largely at a stalemate, focus has shifted to the air, where Ukraine has increasingly dealt blows to Russia’s more powerful air force and taken aim deeper within enemy territory.
Now that growing power may have taken a tragic turn, and the two sides are battling not for control of the skies, but for control of the narrative.
“It could be a terrible accident, it could be something completely different, or it could be a disinformation campaign,” said Neil Melvin, the director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute, or RUSI, a London-based think tank. “All of these scenarios, I think, currently are possible until we can get some more information,” he told NBC News.
Reliable information is hard to come by at the best of times in this war, in which both sides tightly control its flow. But with the plane downed inside Russia — no stranger to deadly and mysterious incidents involving aircraft — there seemed little hope that the exact circumstances of the crash would be clarified.
On Thursday, Russia said "fragmented human remains" and flight recorders of the downed plane had been found, but it remains unclear how much information Moscow will share, and whether any independent investigators will be allowed to examine the wreckage or the site. It’s also not clear if any bodies have been recovered.
But the Kremlin lost no time in accusing Ukraine of gunning down its own troops.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that Kyiv knew full well that 65 Ukrainian POWs were on board, but shot the plane down anyway to put the blame on Moscow. A leading Russian propagandist even published a list of the names of those allegedly on board, which Ukraine said contained some who had already been swapped.
On Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called for an international probe into what he called the “criminal actions of the Kyiv regime.”
Andrei Kartapolov, head of the defense affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament, also said that Ukraine was given a 15-minute warning about the plane.
Kyiv has delighted in weakening the Russian navy’s stranglehold on the Black Sea, but had spent much of the war struggling to counter its dominance in the skies — a weakness that undermined its efforts to advance on the battlefield and left its cities vulnerable to aerial attacks.
But in recent weeks Ukraine appeared determined to change that.
Zelenskyy has warned that his forces “must gain air superiority” as Ukraine’s cities have been pummeled with airstrikes over the winter.
Less than two weeks ago, Ukraine claimed to have shot down a Russian spy plane and airborne command center, in what military analysts said would amount to one of its biggest successes against Russia’s superior air power since the beginning of the war.
It came as Kyiv has been increasingly taking aim at Russian territories itself. Drones continue to fly over the border, hitting strategic targets including military airfields. Belgorod has come under increasing fire, culminating in a late December airstrike on the region’s namesake capital that killed 24 people.
But the shooting down of the plane Wednesday and the questions over the presence of the POWs on board could turn into a serious setback for Kyiv amid growing reservations in the West about continued funding of Ukraine’s military campaign.
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- Daryna Mayer,Yuliya Talmazan
Jan 24, 2024 · Russia says the plane was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war. Local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said there were no survivors. Ukraine has not completely ruled out shooting down the...
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17) [ b ] was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down by Russian-backed forces [ 4 ][ 5 ][ 6 ][ 7 ] with a Buk 9M38 surface-to-air missile on 17 July 2014, while flying over eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed. [ 8 ]
www.bbc.com · news · world-europe-68080529Russian jet crashes carrying Ukrainian PoWs - Moscow - BBC
Jan 24, 2024 · A Russian Ilyushin-76 military transport plane has crashed in the southern Belgorod region near Ukraine. Russia's ministry of defence said 65 captured Ukrainian military were on the plane...
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Moscow of "playing with the lives of Ukrainian prisoners", after a deadly plane crash in western Russia. He demanded an international...
The Russian Defence Ministry says a military plane carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war has crashed in southern Russia. The crash happened in the Belgorod region and involved a Il-76 military...
