Zelensky accuses Kremlin of playing with lives of PoWs

Moscow accused Kyiv of shooting down the Ilyushin Il-76 over the Belgorod region, killing Ukrainian soldiers heading to a prisoner-exchange site.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused the Kremlin of playing with the lives of Ukrainian prisoners of war after Russia accused Kyiv’s forces of shooting down a military plane that it said was carrying dozens of Ukrainian servicemen to a prisoner swap.

Video showed the Il-76 plane falling to the ground on Wednesday and exploding in a fireball close to Belgorod, a Russian city 40km from the border with Ukraine.

According to the Russian defence ministry all 65 Ukrainian prisoners, six crew members and three other passengers were killed. It said the PoWs were being flown to Belgorod from an airfield near Moscow and were scheduled to be exchanged later on Wednesday at the Kolotilovka border crossing.

The ministry said that Ukraine had blown up the plane so it could blame the PoWs’ deaths on Moscow, but offered no evidence to support the claim. “By committing this terrorist act, the Ukrainian leadership has showed its true face. It disregarded the lives of its own citizens,” the ministry said.

Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence service, confirmed to the RFE/RL website that a prisoner exchange with Russia was due to take place but would not comment on whether the PoWs were on board the plane.

In his nightly address, Mr Zelensky called for an international investigation to establish the facts of the incident.

“It is obvious that the Russians are playing with the lives of Ukrainian prisoners, with the feelings of their relatives and with the emotions of our society,” he said.

GUR also claimed that Russia had not asked Ukraine to ensure the security of airspace around Belgorod, as is usually the procedure for prisoner exchanges.

“This may indicate deliberate actions by Russia aimed at endangering the safety of prisoners,” he said.

Vyacheslav Volodin, Speaker of the Russian parliament, said: “(Ukraine) shot down its own soldiers in mid-air. Their mothers, wives and children were waiting for them. They took a decision and shot down our defenceless pilots on a military transport plane, who were carrying out a humanitarian mission.” He alleged that American and German missiles had been used in the attack.

Media in Kyiv, citing sources within the Ukrainian military, said that the plane had been carrying S-300 missiles and that there had been no PoWs on board.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow had demanded an emergency UN Security Council session to discuss the incident.

The Soviet-era Il-76 is designed to airlift troops and military equipment. Russia has used S-300s to bombard Kharkiv from the Belgorod region. Intended for air defence, Russia has modified them to strike targets on the ground, to devastating effect.

Margarita Simonyan, head of the Kremlin-backed RT media outlet, published what she said was a list of the Ukrainian prisoners aboard the plane. The oldest was 58 and the youngest 21.

At least 12 of the men on the list were said by Russian media to be members of Azov, a Ukrainian military unit whose fighters mounted a months-long defence of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol before eventually surrendering to Vladimir Putin’s forces in May 2022.

Kyiv’s main organisation for monitoring the fate of its PoWs suggested that the Russian reports could be part of a plot to encourage rifts in Ukraine. “(Russia) is actively conducting information special operations aimed at destabilising Ukrainian society,” it said.

The deaths of several dozen Ukrainian prisoners of war is a blow to Ukraine as it tries to fend off Russian assaults along the front lines in the east and south and seeks further military aid from the West, where political deadlocks and partisan conflicts have stymied the flow of critical assistance to the country.

The incident comes as Russia’s invasion approaches its two-year mark, with Moscow’s forces on the offensive to try to add to the nearly 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory that they control.

Russia has pounded Ukrainian cities in recent months with waves of strike drones and missiles, aiming to deplete Ukraine’s stock of air defences and sap the morale of its population amid warnings by officials in Kyiv that the country will struggle to hold Russia back if it doesn’t get the weapons it needs from the West.

Ukraine and Russia have each taken hundreds of prisoners during the conflict and organised exchanges of captives in the past. Earlier this month, Moscow and Kyiv conducted what observers said was the biggest prisoner exchange of the conflict so far.

The Times