Kyiv, Ukraine – Two days after a Russian military cargo plane was shot down near the Ukrainian border, unanswered questions loom as Moscow and Kiev offer starkly contradictory versions, with insufficient evidence.
Moscow claimed that an Il-76 carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners was attempting to land in the western city of Belgorod on Wednesday ahead of that day’s exchange.
The Ukrainian Air Defense Force near Kharkiv claimed to have shot down the plane with two missiles.
Russian lawmaker Andrei Kartapolov claimed that the three missiles were fired from either the US-made Patriot air defense complex or the German-made Iris-T system.
“Although Ukrainian leaders were well aware of the exchange and were informed about how the prisoners would be delivered, the Il-76 was shot down by three missiles,” he was quoted as saying.
Moscow claimed that the plane crashed near the village of Yablonova, killing all the Ukrainian prisoners, the three Russian guards who were escorting them, and six crew members.
The Ukrainska Pravda news website quoted an anonymous military official as saying the downed plane was “their doing,” but the brief report was quickly deleted.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy did not say who or what caused the crash, but called for an internal investigation and accused Russia of “playing with the lives of Ukrainian prisoners.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov retorted: [Zelenksyy] That would mean an international investigation into the Kiev regime’s criminal activities, but then there needs to be an actual investigation. ”
Margarita Simonyan, one of the Kremlin’s main supporters and head of the Russia Today media network, posted a list of 65 alleged prisoners on her Telegram channel.
Kiev said it was planning a prisoner exchange that day.
He did not confirm the authenticity of the list Simonyan shared, but said one person on the list had already been exchanged earlier this month.
Ukraine claimed that Russia had not provided information about the aircraft, which was actually carrying missiles for the S-300 air defense system.
Cellphone video believed to have been taken near the crash site showed the plane in flames and a trail of smoke believed to be left by a Ukrainian missile.
another video No trace of a body was found in the alleged plane debris.
Meanwhile, in order to “provide” evidence of Kiev’s war crimes, there are rumors that Russia will kill captured Ukrainian servicemen held in Russian prisons and place their remains among the wreckage of crashed planes. Suspicions abounded.
“They have prisoners on the ground and they will have to kill them, mess up their bodies and mix the debris with the plane’s debris,” a Ukrainian military official told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.
Ukraine’s top military expert agreed.
“To prove their case, the Russians may take considerable measures, such as purging these prisoners of war and mutilating their bodies,” said former Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Ihor Romanenko. General told Al Jazeera.
He said it was “likely” that Ukraine’s air defense forces shot down the plane, but there was too little evidence to prove that and it was difficult to say for sure who and what was on board the plane before it was shot down. said that it could not be done.
But Romanenko, who spent decades in the Air Defense Force, said that two missiles from the S-200 or S-300 complex were capable of transporting the Il-76 cargo, a skilled Soviet warhorse capable of transporting up to 10 kilometers. He said he has personally seen how it fits on the plane. 40 tons.
He said the Russian government was carrying out a “provocation” with the plane and was unlikely to agree to an independent investigation.
The incident reminded him of the shooting down of a Malaysian MH-17 aircraft carrying 298 passengers and crew by pro-Moscow separatists in the Donbas region on July 17, 2014.
Separatist and pro-Russian residents of the region said in the days after the accident that the CIA had “loaded” planes with hundreds of dead and “pre-frozen” bodies to “assemble” Moscow.
An international investigation, based on analysis of the wreckage and intercepted phone calls, concluded that the plane was destroyed by a Russian-supplied BUK surface-to-air missile. Investigators later said there were “strong indications” that Russian President Vladimir Putin had approved the handover of the BUK complex to separatists.
“Russian propaganda statement”
Another Ukrainian analyst said that following the loss of the plane this week, Russia decided to launch a propaganda “campaign” while hiding evidence of what actually happened.
“What we are seeing is Russian propaganda statements, clear information-psychological operations against Ukraine, and a lack of evidence of the Russian version,” Volodymyr Fesenko, director of the Penta think tank in Kiev, told Al Jazeera.
Russia has not handed over the bodies of the 65 prisoners, and Ukrainian intelligence official Andily Yusov said only five bodies had been handed over to the Belgorod morgue.
The Russian government also said that only three guards escorted 50 prisoners of war, compared to previous prisoners of war who escorted three or four Ukrainians per Russian prisoner. Conflicting information about the exchange.
“There are too many contradictions,” Fesenko said.
For him and other observers, Russia’s claims were reminiscent of the events that took place in July 2022 at the Olinivka prisoner of war camp near the Moscow-occupied city of Donetsk.
The Russian government claimed that Ukraine fired a US-made HIMARS missile that hit the camp, killing 62 people and injuring 130.
Pro-Kremlin media claimed that Kiev deliberately killed prisoners of war who could have testified about war crimes allegedly committed during the siege of Mariupol in 2022.
However, Moscow denied access to the facility to search teams sent by the United Nations and the International Red Cross.
Meanwhile, media analysis based on satellite images and photos and videos after the prison explosion showed that Russia’s claims were fabricated and that the building was destroyed by a bomb that was detonated inside the building.
But international observers offered a sobering explanation of how the disaster may have been caused by a severe lack of coordination among Ukraine’s military institutions.
“One military agency was preparing for a prisoner exchange, which is usually done in secret. Another military agency was moving a Patriot or similar aircraft to Russia’s border in secret mode because of something large and heavy. They knew that things were flying across the Russian border,” Nikolai Mitrokhin of the University of Bremen in Germany told Al Jazeera.
“And as soon as they saw, [the Il-76 plane] On their monitors, no one thought to call Kiev and ask if a prisoner exchange was underway. [the prisoners] Get on that plane,” he said.
Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers, some of the Ukrainian prisoners on board the plane, slammed Kiev’s war policies, claiming that Kiev had deliberately destroyed the plane to warn Ukrainian servicemen not to surrender.
Russian parliamentarian Alexei Zhuravlev was quoted as saying on Wednesday that “Ukraine deliberately provoked its own people so that they would not surrender.”
