Investigators have found the flight data recorders from the Ilyushin-76 transport plane that crashed near the border with Ukraine on Wednesday, Russian authorities said, even as Ukraine has dismissed Russian claims the plane carried Ukrainian POWs and was accidentally shot down by Kyiv.
The aircraft was seen on video falling from the sky and crashing in a huge ball of flame near the city of Belgorod on Wednesday morning. Russian officials said it was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war who were set to be released that day, and nine other passengers and crew, all of whom died in the accident.
Ukraine says it still has no answers to who shot the plane down or what it was carrying, and that Russia has not provided the names of the Ukrainians who reportedly died in the crash. In the first hours after the crash, Ukrainian media cited sources in the Ukrainian general staff as saying they had shot down the plane and that it was ferrying anti-aircraft missiles.Video footage of the crash site shows no apparent sign of bodies, despite the Russian claims that 74 people were killed.
"It is obvious that the Russians are messing with the lives of Ukrainian captives, the feelings of their relatives, and the emotions of our society. All clear facts must be established to the extent possible, given that the aircraft crashed on Russian territory – beyond our control. 'Facts' is the key word now," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address.
Ukraine’s military intelligence service suggested they may have been set up by the Russians, saying late Wednesday that Russia never told it how or when the Ukrainian prisoners would arrive for a pre-planned swap, although this had been standard practice in the past.
“Ukraine was not informed about the number of vehicles, routes and forms of delivery of prisoners. It is known that prisoners are delivered by air, rail and road,” the statement said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday repeated the allegation that Ukraine had downed the plane. “The fact that the Ukrainians killed their own prisoners, their citizens, who were supposed to be home within literally just a day, is a completely heinous act, of course,” Peskov said, adding that “no one can say” how the incident will affect future prisoner exchanges.
Russia has called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Thursday to discuss the crash.
Russia accused Ukraine in the 2014 shooting down of Malaysian Airways flight MH17, which was blown out of the sky over the Russian-occupied Donbas region, killing 298 civilians. Last year, international investigators found that Russian-backed separatists had shot down the plane using a Russian-supplied missile and that Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to supply the missile.