KYIV
\nQuestions remained Thursday over the military plane crash that Russia said had killed dozens of captured Ukrainian soldiers ahead of a planned prisoner exchange, with Moscow and Kyiv trading accusations at the UN Security Council.
\nRussia has blamed Ukrainian forces for downing the IL-76 transport plane over the southern Belgorod region on Wednesday.
\nIt said 65 captured Ukrainian soldiers were on board, as well as their escorts and the crew.
\nVideos on social media showed a large plane in the region plummeting from the sky on its side before crashing in a fireball, in what the Kremlin called a \u201cmonstrous act.\u201d
\nRussia\u2019s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said it had opened a \u201cterrorism\u201d probe into the crash, saying the plane was downed by a \u201cmissile from the territory of Ukraine.\u201d
\nIt released a 39-second video of the scene that mainly showed aerial shots of a large blackened stretch in a snow-covered field with some damaged trees.
\nThe video also showed a block of twisted metal and wires, as well as a hand and an arm \u2014 though it was unclear if they were from one or two people. No other human remains were shown.
\n\u201cFragmented remains of people were found, as well as the flight recorders of the aircraft, which were sent for decoding,\u201d the Investigative Committee said.
\nUkraine\u2019s SBU security service also announced it had opened a criminal probe into the downing, specifically into \u201cviolations of the laws and customs of war.\u201d
\nUkraine\u2019s rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets called for the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to be allowed to inspect the crash site.
\nThe ICRC did not respond to Kyiv\u2019s request, but it described the reports of the crash as \u201cworrisome\u201d in a statement to AFP.
\n\u201cWe will not make any comments or speculations at this stage, until facts are established,\u201d it said.
\nAt an emergency session of the UN Security Council Thursday evening, requested by Russia to discuss the downed plane, Moscow and Kyiv both sought to pin the blame on the other.
\n\u201cAll of the information that we have today shows that we are dealing with a premeditated, thought-through crime,\u201d said Russia\u2019s deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, adding that Ukraine\u2019s leaders \u201cknew the route very well, knew about the way the soldiers were going to be transported to the place of exchange.\u201d
\nHe accused Kyiv of sacrificing its own troops \u201cto Western geopolitical interests.\u201d
\nUkraine\u2019s deputy ambassador Khrystyna Hayovyshyn rejected the accusation, saying that \u201cUkraine was not informed about the number of vehicles, roads and means of transportation of the captives.\u201d
\n\u201cThis alone may constitute intentional actions by Russia to endanger the lives and safety of the prisoners,\u201d she said.
\nWhile Ukraine has not denied outright that it downed the plane, officials in Kyiv have questioned key aspects of Russia\u2019s narrative, such as whether Ukrainian servicemen were killed.
\nUkraine\u2019s military intelligence said it had no \u201ccomprehensive information\u201d detailing who was on the flight.
\nKyiv has confirmed that an exchange had been scheduled for later Wednesday on the border between the two countries.
\nBut the military intelligence unit said Moscow had not informed it in advance that the POWs would be transported by plane, as it had in the past.
\nIn another carefully worded statement, Ukraine\u2019s army pointed to heightened Russian military activity in the Belgorod region, pledging to continue attacking Russian military targets \u2014 again without specifically addressing Moscow\u2019s claims.
\nUkrainian media initially cited defense sources saying that the Ukrainian army had downed the plane, and that it had been carrying missiles. Those claims were quickly retracted.
\nPresident Volodymyr Zelensky has neither confirmed nor denied Moscow\u2019s claims.
\nRussia was \u201cplaying with the lives of Ukrainian prisoners,\u201d he said late Wednesday, calling for an international investigation.
\nRussian officials have rolled out a series of statements presenting their side of the story, but have not presented evidence that POWs were onboard.
\nMoscow has been much more circumspect over previous incidents.
\nIt offered no comment, for example, when Kyiv claimed last week to have downed an A-50 Russian reconnaissance plane and damaged an Il-22 bomber over the Azov Sea.
\nIn August, the plane carrying the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, crashed on a flight from Moscow to Saint Petersburg.
\nPrigozhin died alongside his top aides in the incident, two months after they attempted to topple Russia\u2019s military leadership, angering President Vladimir Putin.
\nPutin said the plane had crashed because passengers had detonated a grenade on board, but Moscow provided no evidence.
\nIn July 2014, when Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine with all 298 people on board killed, the Kremlin proposed a variety of explanations \u2014 sometimes contradictory.
\nIn 2022, a Dutch court sentenced three men fighting among Kremlin-backed separatist forces to life in prison in absentia.
\nSeparately, a Ukrainian security source told AFP on Thursday that Kyiv\u2019s security services had orchestrated an overnight drone attack on an oil refinery in the southern Russian town of Tuapse.
\nKyiv has ramped up strikes on Russian oil and gas facilities over the past two months, part of what it has called \u201cfair\u201d retaliation for Russian strikes on its own energy infrastructure.
\nUkraine has claimed responsibility for a string of attacks on Russian energy infrastructure in the past two weeks, including a huge inferno at a depot in western Russia last Friday.
\nRussia also said Thursday that a drone attack killed a woman in the village of Lozovaya Rudka, which lies directly on the Ukraine border in the Belgorod region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KYIV Questions remained Thursday over the military plane crash that Russia said had killed dozens of captured Ukrainian soldiers ahead of a planned prisoner exchange, with Moscow and Kyiv trading accusations at the UN Security Council. Russia has blamed Ukrainian forces for downing the IL-76 transport plane over the southern Belgorod region on Wednesday. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383365,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-383346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n