Officials in Ukraine say Russia has provided no credible evidence to back its claims that their own forces shot down a military transport plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war who were to be swapped for Russian POWs.

Officials in Ukraine said Russia has provided no credible evidence to back its claims that Ukrainian forces shot down a military transport plane that Moscow says was carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war who were to be swapped for Russian POWs.

The Ukrainian agency that deals with prisoner exchanges said late Friday that Russian officials had “with great delay” provided it with a list of the 65 Ukrainians who Moscow said had died in the plane crash in Russia’s Belgorod region on Wednesday.

Ukraine’s Coordination Staff for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said relatives of the named POWs were unable to identify their loved ones in crash site photos provided by Russian authorities. The agency’s update cited Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Lt. Col. Kyrylo Budanov, as saying that Kyiv had no verifiable information about who was on the plane.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Ukraine’s Coordination Staff for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said relatives of the named POWs were unable to identify their loved ones in crash site photos provided by Russian authorities.

    Social media users in the Belgorod region posted a video Wednesday that showed a plane falling from the sky in a snowy, rural area, and a huge ball of fire erupting where it apparently hit the ground.

    Kyiv has neither confirmed nor denied that its forces downed a Russian military transport plane that day, and Russia’s claim that the crash killed Ukrainian POWs couldn’t be independently verified.

    In a live interview with the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Red Cross Media Relations Officer Oleksandr Vlasenko also remarked that “very little time” had passed between the initial reports of the crash and Moscow declaring it was ready to return the bodies of the Ukrainian POWs.

    Kuleba and Landsbergis also said that Kyiv and its EU partners were inching closer to making more funds from the European Peace Facility available for long-term weapons, ammunition and other military aid deliveries for Ukraine.

    Also on Saturday, authorities in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region said that a group of Russian saboteurs shot dead two civilians, a brother and sister, living in a border village less than five kilometers (three miles) from Russia.

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