Moscow
A Russian Ilyushin-76 military transport plane has crashed in the southern Belgorod region bordering Ukraine.
Russia’s ministry of defence said 65 captured Ukrainian military were on the plane heading to Belgorod region for a prisoner exchange.
None of the details surrounding those on board can be independently verified.
Ria Novosti news agency said another nine people were on the plane, including six crew.
Ukraine’s general staff, quoted by the Ukrainska Pravda website, said the plane was transporting missiles for Russia’s S-300 air defence systems. It made no mention of prisoners of war.
However, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, Andriy Yusov, said a prisoner exchange had been due to take place.
“I can state that the exchange planned for today is not going ahead,” he told Radio Liberty.
Video shared on social media showed a plane going down followed by an explosion and a fireball near the village of Yablonovo, 70km (44 miles) to the north-east of the city of Belgorod, at around 11:00 local time (08:00 GMT).
The regional governor in Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said the plane crashed in a field near a residential area and that everyone on board had died.
Some Ukrainian media suggested initially that the Il-76 may have been downed by Ukrainian forces, but those reports were later deleted.
Ukraine’s general staff told BBC Ukrainian that it did not have accurate information about the situation and that it was investigating the circumstances.
The Ukrainian government body in charge of prisoners of war warned that Russia was “actively carrying out special information operations against Ukraine, which are aimed at destabilising Ukrainian society”.
The crash took place on Russian territory and there is little chance of corroborating what happened.
Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s parliamentary human rights commissioner, appealed to Ukrainians to trust only official sources: “Do not be fooled by provocations. More detailed information will be provided later.”
In a later statement, the Russian defence ministry said military transport plane had taken off from Chkalovsky air base north-east of Moscow en route for Belgorod, alleging that Ukraine’s air force had fired two anti-aircraft missiles from the Lyptsi area south of the Ukrainian border.
A prisoner exchange had been due to take place on Wednesday afternoon at a border checkpoint 100km to the west of Belgorod, it added.
Andrei Kartapolov, the chairman of Russia’s parliamentary defence committee, claimed there had been a second plane in the air transporting 80 Ukrainian prisoners, although that plane had then changed course. “There can now be no talk of any other [prisoner] exchanges,” Mr Kartapolov told Russian TV.
