Sources in the Ukrainian General Staff told the Pravda newspaper and the state news agency Ukrinform on Wednesday that one of their missiles shot down a Russian military aircraft that the high command said was carrying weapons, particularly S-300 missiles. Previously, the Russian Ministry of Defense, citing official media, said that an Ilyushin Il-76 military transport plane crashed in the Belgorod region of Russia with at least 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war and nine others, several of them crew members. The ministry later said its radars had detected the firing of two missiles from Ukraine. Local authorities in Belgorod, citing Portal, claim that, according to the Russian version, none of the plane's 74 occupants survived.
The Ukrainian agency Interfax also pointed out, citing sources in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, that the plane was shot down by its army shortly after takeoff. Officially, this ministry stressed in a statement that it could not confirm this information and asked for time to collect more information about the event. However, a spokesman for the intelligence service of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (GUR) told Radio Svoboda that a prisoner exchange was planned for this Wednesday, but that it would ultimately not take place, without giving further details.
The Russian Defense Ministry assured in a statement that it had detected the firing of two missiles from Ukrainian territory. “The aircraft was destroyed by an anti-aircraft missile system of the Ukrainian Armed Forces from the Liptsy area in the Kharkiv region,” Moscow said.
A video shot by a neighbor on his cell phone and shared on social media shows the plane plummeting to the ground. A plume of smoke is identified on the Il-76's flight path, which would coincide with that of a missile impact. The alert for a possible airstrike remained activated in this area of Belgorod at the time, leading Ukrainian defense analysts to speculate that the device could also have been shot down by Russian anti-aircraft forces.
The Prisoners of War Coordination Center, an agency of the Ukrainian government, issued a statement calling on media and citizens to avoid disseminating unconfirmed information. The center assures that it is working to clarify what happened and warns that Russia is running disinformation operations “to destabilize Ukrainian society.”
The chairman of the Defense Committee of the State Duma and the Russian parliament, Andrei Kartapolov, had accused Kiev of shooting down the plane, even before sources in the Ukrainian armed forces confirmed this to Pravda and Ukrinform. “Around 11 o'clock [las nueve de la mañana en horario peninsular español] An IL-76 aircraft crashed near Belgorod airport. There were 65 prisoners of war from the Ukrainian Armed Forces on board for exchange. “They managed to destroy it,” this senior official said. According to Kartapolov, a second plane carrying 80 more prisoners flew on the same route.
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“Ukrainian leaders were fully aware of the exchange and informed about the manner in which the prisoners were handed over, but the plane was shot down by three German-made Patriot or Iris missiles,” he added, before mentioning a future prisoner exchange Ukraine was excluded from them. Patriot and Iris-T are anti-aircraft weapons provided to Ukraine by its NATO allies.
For his part, Duma President Vyacheslav Volodin has announced that the Russian lower house will send an official message about this demolition to the US Congress and the German Bundestag. Moscow's aim with this letter is to sow doubts among Western politicians about military support for Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion. This seems to be indicated by Volodin's statements, who stated: “The deputies [occidentales] they will finally see the light; who they finance, who they help. “This is the Nazi regime that is being fueled by Biden, Macron, Scholz and other politicians.”
According to Russian authorities, the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine has seen frequent Ukrainian attacks in recent months, including a rocket attack in December that killed 25 people.
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