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A Russian military transport plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war crashed near the border with Ukraine on Wednesday morning, killing all 74 people on board, according to Russian authorities.
The defence ministry said the Il-76 plane was transporting 65 Ukrainian soldiers to Belgorod region — the Russian province that has faced the most spillover from President Vladimir Putin’s nearly two-year invasion — for a prisoner exchange, according to state newswire RIA Novosti.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the regional governor, said investigators and emergency workers were at the scene and that all the passengers had died.
Six crew members and three other people accompanying the prisoners were also among the passengers, according to the defence ministry.
Anatoly Kartapolov, chair of the defence committee in Russia’s lower house of parliament, said another Il-76 carrying 80 Ukrainian prisoners of war had been following closely behind, but was safely diverted from the area.
Rodion Miroshnik, special rapporteur for the “crimes of the Kyiv regime” at Russia’s foreign ministry, accused Ukraine of shooting down the plane in an “act of insane barbarity demonstrating a complete indifference to human life”.
Ukrainian media initially reported, citing anonymous sources, that Kyiv’s armed forces had shot the plane down and claimed it was carrying missiles used for air strikes against Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, which borders Belgorod. Some of them later deleted posts with those claims.
Video posted on social media app Telegram showed a plane banking sharply near a village before bursting into a large ball of flame as it hit the ground.
Trails from what appeared to be anti-aircraft fire were visible in the sky behind it, while the plane appeared to be on fire before it hit the ground.
The Ukrainian state body responsible for prisoners of war did not immediately confirm the incident, but urged caution over “enemy propaganda resources about the crash”.
