Il-76 crashed in Belgorod region. Official versions of Kyiv and Moscow

The disaster happened around 11 a.m. Moscow time (10 a.m. Kyiv time) at a location 50 to 60 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

The Il-76 is a military transport plane that can transport military equipment, weapons and about a hundred people.

Almost immediately after the plane crash, Russian state authorities and media began commenting on the event, directly blaming Ukraine.

Even the State Duma of the Russian Federation quickly announced the involvement of the Ukrainian military in the downing of the IL-76.

According to the official statement of the Ministry of Defense of Russia, the plane was shot down at 11:15 a.m. while it was on its way from Chkalovsky Airport (Moscow Region) to Belgorod. He allegedly transported captured Ukrainian soldiers for exchange.

According to the version of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Armed Forces of Ukraine fired two rockets from an anti-aircraft missile complex near the village of Liptsi in the Kharkiv region, about 95 kilometers from where the plane crashed.

According to the department, the IL-76 had six crew members, 65 captured Ukrainian soldiers for exchange and three Russians. The crew and all passengers of the plane were killed.

The exchange of prisoners was supposed to take place in the afternoon of January 24 at the Kolotilivka checkpoint.

"The Ukrainian leadership knew very well that, according to established practice, the transport of Ukrainian soldiers to the airport in Belgorod for the purpose of exchange today will be carried out by a military transport plane," insists the Russian Ministry of Defense.

The Ministry believes that the Armed Forces shot down the plane with the aim of "accusing Russia of destroying the Ukrainian army".

At the same time, Andrei Kartapolov, the head of the State Duma's defense committee, said that there were two planes with prisoners.

 

According to him, the second Il-76 plane, carrying 80 Ukrainian prisoners of war, was diverted after the first one crashed in the Belgorod region.

Kartapolov said that exchanges between Russia and Ukraine, "it seems, will be put on hold."

 

The Kremlin has not yet commented on the downing of the plane, but former President of the Russian Federation and now Deputy President of the Security Council Dmitro Medvedev called the situation with the destruction of the Il-76 "the result of an internal political struggle" of the elites in Ukraine.

 

Statements of Kiev

 

For a long time, Ukrainian officials did not comment on the crash of the Il-76 near Belgorod.

However, shortly after the incident, statements from "sources in the Ukrainian government" began to appear in the media. Thus, the publications "Ukrainian Pravda" and "RBK-Ukraine" announced that the IL-76 was "the work of the Armed Forces of Ukraine" and that the plane was not transporting prisoners, but missiles for the air defense system S-300, which regularly bombard Kharkiv.

Later, the mass media and numerous Ukrainian Telegram channels changed the message, removing the first words about "the work of the Armed Forces of Ukraine".

Then the Main Directorate for Intelligence Affairs of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine confirmed that on Wednesday, January 24, a prisoner exchange with the Russian Federation was planned.

"I can say that the exchange planned for today is currently not taking place," said Andriy Yusov, representative of the Ukrainian SSR, in a comment for Radio Svoboda.

However, information about the prisoners on the downed Il-76 is still being verified, he added.

Similar statements about the need for a "detailed check" of data were made by the Office of the Ombudsman, the Coordination Center for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, and the President's Office.

On Wednesday at 4:30 p.m., the General Staff of the Armed Forces finally made a public statement. It follows that the Ukrainian army is taking measures to stop regular Russian attacks on the Kharkiv region.

 

"In order to reduce the missile threat in particular, the Armed Forces of Ukraine not only control the airspace, but also closely monitor the missile launch points and the logistics of their delivery, especially with the use of military transport aircraft.

 

The intensity of the shelling is connected with the increase in the number of military transport planes that have recently headed for the Belgorod airport," the General Staff announced.

"With this in mind, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will continue to take measures to destroy the means of delivery, control the airspace to destroy the terrorist threat, including the Belgorod-Kharkov route," the message said.

 

Presumably, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine also fleetingly admits its involvement in the destruction of the Russian IL-76 as "a means of delivering missiles for the shelling of Kharkiv".

The General Staff does not report anything about the presence or absence of prisoners in the destroyed plane.

A Ukrainian Air Force source in the General Staff indicated that other departments are taking care of the issue of prisoners.

The Central Intelligence Agency released a statement about this event. It states that Ukraine fulfilled all agreements for the preparation of the exchange of prisoners, but their safety had to be ensured by the Russian side.

"At the same time, the Ukrainian side was not informed of the need to ensure the security of the airspace in the area of the city of Belgorod in a certain period of time, as it was done several times in the past," the statement said.

Ukraine was not informed about the number of vehicles, routes and forms of prisoner delivery. It is emphasized that prisoners are transported by air, rail and road transport.

"The landing of a transport plane in a zone of hostilities of 30 kilometers cannot be safe and in any case it must be discussed with both sides, because otherwise it endangers the entire exchange process".

This may indicate deliberate actions by the Russian Federation aimed at creating a threat to the lives and safety of prisoners, according to the intelligence agency.

"Based on that, we may be talking about planned and deliberate actions of the Russian Federation aimed at destabilizing the situation in Ukraine and weakening international support for our country," the statement said.

 

At the same time, GUR emphasizes that intelligence officers still do not have "reliable and comprehensive information" about who exactly was on the plane and in what number.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his address that he invited the heads of the State Security Service, the Security Service, the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces of Ukraine to submit reports on the situation with the plane and the exchange.

"It is obvious that the Russians are playing with the lives of Ukrainian prisoners, with the feelings of their relatives and the emotions of our society," Zelensky said.

At the same time, Zelensky noted that it is necessary to establish "all the clear facts" - "as much as possible, given that the plane crashed on Russian territory - beyond our control".

 

The president added that Ukraine is investigating the circumstances of the incident, will inform its partners about it, and will also insist on an international investigation.

 

Open questions

 

Many questions remain about the disaster. Specifically, how common is the practice of transporting prisoners by air?

Maksim Kolesnikov, a freed Ukrainian soldier, says that he and other prisoners were indeed transported by plane. However, there was also a large number of guards at the same time, and not three people, as claimed by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

"When I was transported by plane from Bryansk to Belgorod, for every 50 prisoners there were about 20 of their military police," he wrote on his X profile (formerly Twitter).

Aleksandr Kovalenko, a Ukrainian military analyst of the "Information Resistance" community, notes that Russian legislation determines the number of convoys when transporting people. He gives the following calculations:

A regular convoy is determined according to the calculation: two companions - for one or two prisoners, three companions - for three to six, seven companions - for seven to 10.

With enhanced escort: there should be three escorts per person; for 9 to 10 - 12 companions.

That is, the number of companions should be approximately equal to the number of prisoners.

 

In addition, it is still unclear at what exact moment the Il-76 was shot down. Ukrainian Interfax, citing a source close to the Ministry of Defense, reported that the plane was shot down during takeoff.

 

OSINT analysts, as well as some Russian media, point out that the plane was probably moving north of the village of Jablonovo in the Belgorod region.

For example, the Russian media "Mediazona" announced that the fall of the Il-76 was recorded by eyewitnesses from the center of the village of Jablonov in the north direction. The plane crashed in a field behind residential buildings.

This raises questions about where exactly the plane was headed. To or from Belgorod? If he was on the way to Belgorod with the prisoners, then the question is where they were taken.

As for the possible list of prisoners, the document, the authenticity of which the BBC could not immediately confirm or deny, was made public by the head of Russia Today, Margarita Simonyan.

But it was later learned that the name of at least one prisoner on this list matched the information of Ukrainians who were allegedly exchanged earlier.

The Russian side did not provide any photo or video evidence that the Ukrainians were on the IL-76 plane.

 

BBC Verify provided footage of the crash in Belgorod to two military experts, both of whom confirmed that the plane had been shot down.

Mark Kancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, told the BBC: "The image shows that the plane has been shot down. You can see the plane losing altitude, followed by a fireball." He added that the plume of smoke visible in the sky "corresponds to an explosion".

"There is a small blast mark that could be a missile mark," Kansian said.

Christopher Petrov, a ground-based air defense expert at defense intelligence firm Janes, said the footage of the plane crash "indicates pre-crash damage".

"Approximately one or two seconds before the crash, a fire apparently broke out, and a small piece of the plane separated and began to descend on its own, coming out of the nose of the plane," the expert noted.

He added that the clouds of smoke in the video "may indicate the launch of a surface-to-air missile, but we cannot say for sure."