Ukraine says it has intelligence suggesting only five bodies were delivered from the crash site of a Russian military transport plane to a nearby morgue, a Ukraine military intelligence official told CNN, casting doubt on Moscow’s claim that dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed in the explosion.
Moscow and Kyiv gave conflicting accounts of how the Ilyushin Il-76 was downed Wednesday in Russia’s Belgorod region, which neighbors eastern Ukraine. Moscow says the plane was transporting Ukrainian prisoners of war, while Kyiv says it was carrying Russian missiles to be used in further strikes on Ukraine.
But the latest comments indicate Kyiv’s growing confidence that the IL-76 plane, which crashed Wednesday morning in the village of Yablonovo in Russia’s Belgorod region, may not have been carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war ahead of an exchange, as Moscow claimed.
Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence (DI), told CNN the number of bodies brought to the morgue matched the number of crew members on the plane. “No other bodies were detected,” he said.
So I guess the most plausible explanation is this is an info op to make the focus Ukraine’s incompetence rather than the reality of Russia losing yet another costly airframe cause they’re schmos
I don’t even get how the op is supposed to work. Ukraine shooting down an unannounced military plane approaching the war is the right thing to do. Even if everything Russia said was true, it’s not like Ukraine should just stop shooting down enemy aircraft because sometimes they might be carrying POWs rather than munitions. It would be unfortunate for the POWs if it were true, but if I were Ukrainian I wouldn’t question the military’s choice at all.
Russian officials recently claimed that they gave Ukraine advanced notice of it flying over, but same as everything else their counter intel people can come up with, they don’t even have plausible evidence, they’re just throwing up a he said / she said between one side that’s been exaggerating some claims and one side that is outright lying and gaslighting the world on a daily basis.
The only way I could see this as a success for Russia is if it was a counterintelligence operation to expose a mole in their organization. Depending on how high value the mole is/was it might be worth trading an IL-76 for. Keep in mind, I don’t think that is what happened here. Russia is making too many dumb mistakes for this to be any kind of coordinated plan on their part.
It is much MUCH more likely that Ukraine got smarter with their resources and/or took a risk about locating a functional AA missile battery close enough to the Russian border to make this happen. We saw it with the A50 shot down over the Sea of Azov a week or so ago. Russia getting lazy and losing rare and valuable aircraft is getting much more common.
Ukraine shot down 4 aircraft in a day last year in that region although Russia counter claimed it was all friendly fire…
Relax, comrade! Russia army is SO strong, your only worry is friendly fire! I’ve seen FROGS fight better than Ukrainian army. And they were DEAD!
russian telegram channels claimed shootdown of an “ukrainian drone” earlier the same day, so il-76 could be genuine friendly fire. there’s intercepted radio chatter supporting this https://nitter.oksocial.net/olga_pp98/status/1750089351801815354#m
And/or give them cause to not turn over the POW’s since they are already ‘dead’. Hopefully more details will emerge that paint a better picture. No matter the case though, if the POW’s are still alive, then this certainly seals their fate anyway as Russia isn’t going to turn around and hand them over after all this.