The Kiev regime shot down the plane, seeking to pin the blame on Russia for the deaths of the Ukrainian POWs, the Russian Defense Ministry stated.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that radar facilities of the Russian Aerospace Forces recorded the launch of two Ukrainian missiles.
"The aircraft was attacked by Ukrainian forces from the Liptsy locality of the Kharkov region using an anti-aircraft missile system. The radar of the Russian Armed Forces observed the launch of two Ukrainian missiles," the ministry said.
The ministry said the plane was shot down at 11:15 a.m. The plane was flying from the Chkalovsky airfield to Belgorod to transport Ukrainian prisoners of war for exchange.
"The Nazi regime in Kiev took this step in pursuit of the goal of blaming Russia for the destruction of the Ukrainian military," the statement said.
On board the plane were six crew members, 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war for exchange and three Russian servicemen accompanying them. All of them died, the ministry said.
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A Russia-Ukraine POW exchange was scheduled for Wednesday, January 24, but it will no longer take place, Andrey Yusov, spokesman for the Ukrainian defense ministry’s main intelligence directorate, said.
ReplyDelete"I can state that the exchange planned for today is not happening anymore," he said in a commentary for Radio Svoboda (recognized as a foreign agent media outlet in Russia).
The pilots of the IL-76 airplane directed it away from populated areas before it that crashed in Russia’s Belgorod Region, an eyewitness told TASS.
ReplyDelete"The engine was on fire. It started to fall down abruptly, then fell behind the forest and exploded there. The explosion was very powerful. It was falling abruptly, and they [the pilots] went a little over there [to the side]. They took it farther away," said the person who lives in a settlement near the site of the crash.
Another resident of the settlement said she heard a bang before the crash.
"We heard a very strong bang and then we saw the plane going down. We came out after the bang and the plane was already falling," she shared.