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.
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I think the most likely scenario is that russian soldier executed the POWs well before the crash, and are just saying they died in the crash to cover up their war crimes.
Too much hassle for them. They can in practice kill POWs with impunity and just disappear them, and probably already have done so in the past.
This seems more like them attempting to cover up yet another fuck up of theirs, and using the “no you!” retort (as in “we didn’t lose 75 men, you did!”) is one of Putin’s favourite in those kinds of situations, because it serves as an attack as well as covering up something that would make them lose face.
And now with the added “bonus” for Putin that he can kill 75 Ukrainian POWs as a revenge for the attack, and just claim they were on the plane.
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
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.
