But in their statements about the incident, senior Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, did not deny that the plane was shot down, and some stressed Ukraine's right — and urgent need — to target Russian military aircraft given Moscow's ongoing invasion and ongoing airstrikes on Ukrainian cities. And pressure to seize more land.
Zelensky said on Wednesday evening that he would insist on an international investigation. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded by using acid, accusing Kiev of killing its soldiers. He described the downing of the plane as an “atrocity…beyond comprehension” and said Moscow would welcome an international investigation.
“If he means an international investigation into the criminal acts committed by the Kiev regime, then it is certainly necessary,” Peskov told reporters.
Russia has repeatedly sought to thwart international investigations, including into the 2020 poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny with a chemical weapon, and the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine, in which two former Russian security service officers were convicted of murder in 2014. Dutch court.
In his speech on Wednesday evening, Zelensky indicated that the Ukrainian Air Force shot down the plane, which crashed close to Ukraine. Russia regularly launches deadly attacks from the Belgorod region into Ukraine, including on Tuesday, when 18 Ukrainians were killed across the country.
The incident – and the conflicting accounts – raises a set of troubling questions for military and political leaders in Ukraine and Russia.
Regardless of whether Ukrainian prisoners of war were on board, the incident appears to represent a serious intelligence failure on the part of Ukraine — which was not immediately able, or willing, to confirm who or what it believed was on board the plane.
The commander of the Ukrainian Air Force accused Russia on Thursday of deliberately spreading false information to “discredit Ukraine.”
“Their clear goal is to reduce international support for our country,” Lieutenant-General Mykola Oleschuk wrote on Telegram. “It will not work! Ukraine has the right to defend itself and destroy the aggressor’s means of air attack.”
Although Russian officials point the finger at Kiev, they have not explained why a military plane was in such a vulnerable position that it was shot out of the sky – a serious violation of Russian air defenses, and perhaps indicating a violation of protocol.
On Thursday, the Ukrainian State Security Service announced that it had opened an investigation. Dmytro Lobinets, Ukrainian parliamentary commissioner for human rights, said on Ukrainian television that he could not confirm whether there were prisoners of war on board, but stressed that if there had been videos or other evidence confirming such losses, Russia “would have already used they.”
“We did not see any signs of such a large number of people on board, whether they were Ukrainian citizens or non-Ukrainian citizens,” he said. Lobinets also called on international experts to investigate.
The Ukrainian Military Intelligence Directorate confirmed that the prisoner exchange that was scheduled to take place on Wednesday did not take place. It also confirmed that Russia had not informed Ukraine in advance of any prisoner transfer plans and had not been warned to protect the airspace over Belgorod.
“Belgorod was not a point considered to be involved in the exchange, and there was no such information from the Russian side,” said Andrei Yusov, spokesman for Ukrainian military intelligence. “The conversation was about the Sumy region.” Sumy is the Ukrainian border region where the exchange was scheduled to take place at a border checkpoint.
Yusuf said that the Il-76 transport plane was “a military aircraft that should not be used to transport prisoners of war.” In contrast, Ukrainian officials used civilian ground transportation to transport Russian prisoners of war to the exchange point. (Regular air travel in Ukraine has been suspended since the Russian invasion in February 2022.)
The Russian Defense Ministry said Ukraine was aware of the plans. Russia said that in addition to 65 prisoners of war, there were six crew members and three other individuals on board the plane who were killed.
Such exchanges are usually planned in great detail until the last minute of the exchange, when the prisoners pass each other as they cross back into the custody of forces from their homeland. Both armies must coordinate to ensure the safety of the area during the operation and avoid accidental strikes on the exchange point.
Earlier this month, during the latest prisoner exchange — the largest since the start of the war, in which the Russians handed over more than 200 Ukrainian prisoners of war — Moscow officials verbally informed their counterparts in Kiev that the Ukrainian prisoners would be airlifted, Yusuf said. .
“This time, this kind of information or request was not provided by the Russian side,” he said.
Oleksiy, 44, a Ukrainian soldier who was captured in the besieged port city of Mariupol in 2022, said planes were used to transport him and other soldiers when they were exchanged and returned to their homeland. He added that all the Ukrainians on board the plane were blindfolded. “If you had a hat, they would put it on to cover your eyes and tape it to make sure you couldn't see anything at all,” he said. “For those who didn't have a hat, use a bag.”
Oleksiy's journey began in the Russian-occupied city of Olenivka in eastern Ukraine. He then boarded a plane from the city of Taganrog in southwestern Russia to Moscow, then headed to Gomel in southeastern Belarus before crossing into Ukraine at the border. He did not know what type of plane was used, but he said that about 200 blindfolded Ukrainian prisoners were on board. Because of the gang, he was not sure how many Russian officials accompanied the group, but he remembers six or seven different Russian voices on the plane.
He said that the trip lasted 36 hours, during which he was unable to use the bathroom, “which is another type of torture.”
Adding to the spiral of mutual accusations on Thursday, Margarita Simonyan, head of Russia's state propaganda channel RT, published a list of names and dates of birth that she said documented Ukrainian prisoners of war who were on board the ship. The media soon reported that some of those mentioned by Simonyan appeared to be prisoners released in previous exchanges.
But otherwise, Russia has so far provided little evidence to support the claim that dozens of prisoners of war were on board. State-run RT shared a 20-second clip from the crash site, showing scattered debris but no visible body parts. Another short clip posted by RT shows a single body, although the video is significantly blurry, making it impossible to determine what was actually filmed.
Russian officials and military bloggers also ignored the fact that if Ukraine did strike a major target like the Il-76, it would constitute a serious security blunder for the military and for the Belgorod region, which is a major staging ground for the attacks. In Ukraine and a resupply center for Russian forces.
Some military experts suggested that the plane may have been on its way out of Belgorod. Russian officials said the Il-76 was on a “planned flight” to Belgorod from Chkalovsky Air Base in the Moscow region.
But according to an analysis by security intelligence firm Jane's, the plane's flight path, as well as the crash site, “far exceeded any holding or maneuvering pattern” for the approach to the local airport runway.
“It can therefore be safely assumed that the aircraft was not on an approach path to land at Belgorod (unless it was directed to remain at a point at that direction and distance from the airport, for tactical reasons),” Janes said.
Janes added that the plane was flying at a low altitude, which may have been “a tactical ploy to remain under the radar horizon of the Ukrainian defenses in the south, either on the approach to Belgorod, or on the way out of Belgorod.”
All six crew members who died in the accident were assigned to the 117th Russian Military Transport Aviation Regiment stationed in Orenburg and have been identified by regional authorities.
Zelensky said in his somber video speech on Wednesday evening that he gathered senior military officials and spoke to them about “their use of air forces.” He said that the Ukrainian Military Intelligence Directorate “is engaged in finding out the fate of all prisoners.”
Zelensky's delay in commenting publicly on the incident until late Wednesday drew some criticism in Ukraine. In a post on Telegram, MP Oleksiy Honcharenko said officials remained silent because of “evaluations and negativity.” They only want to be involved in positive things.
Natalia Abakumova in Riga, Latvia; Serhiy Morgunov in Lisbon; Kostyantin Khudov, Anastasia Galushka and David L. Stern in Kyiv.
