Russian Plane Crash: A Russian military plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war has crashed on Wednesday (January 24). No concrete information has yet emerged as to why the plane crashed in the Belgorod area. According to Russian officials, all 74 people on board the plane were killed.
Russian officials have claimed that the plane was shot down by Ukrainian missiles. The Russian Defense Ministry said the plane was destroyed by an anti-aircraft missile system deployed in the Lipetsk area of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.
Ukraine denies the allegations
In response, Ukraine’s military said it did not admit that it had fired on the Russian transport plane. Much of the 50-mile stretch from Lipsy to the crash site is covered with surface-to-air missile systems.
Ukraine claims plane was carrying missile
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian defense intelligence official confirmed that the prisoner exchange was scheduled to take place on Wednesday. Another Ukrainian military source was quoted as claiming that the plane was carrying Russian missiles, not prisoners.
Did Ukraine know about the plane?
The question then is whether Ukraine actually knew the time and route of the plane that the Russians say was bringing prisoners to the exchange site, and whether that information was available across the border. Was given to the army unit.
Russia claimed to have fired the missile
In Moscow, Chairman of the Duma Defense Committee, Andrey Kartopolov, claimed, without presenting any evidence, that the missiles fired at the plane were from the US-made Patriot or German-made IRIS-T systems supplied to Ukraine.
Russia says 74 people were killed in a military plane that crashed near the Ukrainian border. Some observers are also reporting that Russian missile defenses in the area were on high alert on Wednesday and that a Ukrainian drone was shot down shortly before the plane crashed.
3 personnel were deployed for the security of prisoners of war
Another surprising thing is that according to the Russians, only three Russian personnel were deployed on the plane (in addition to the crew) to guard the Ukrainian prisoners of war. Maksim Kolesnikov, a former Ukrainian prisoner of war, said in a post on X on Wednesday that when he was flown from Bryansk to Belgorod, about 20 military personnel were deployed for the 50 prisoners.
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