Ukraine has repeatedly asked Russia to hand over the bodies of scores of prisoners of war who Moscow claimed were killed in the downing of a Russian military transport plane by Ukrainian forces, but Russia has refused, a Ukrainian intelligence official said.
Andrii Yusov, the spokesperson for Ukraine‘s military intelligence, in televised remarks late Thursday reaffirmed Ukraine‘s call for an international probe into the Jan. 24 crash that would determine whether the cargo plane carried weapons or passengers along with the crew.
Russia and Ukraine have traded accusations over the crash, with Moscow accusing Kyiv of killing its own men and Ukraine dismissing Moscow’s assertions as “rampant Russian propaganda.”
Kyiv has neither confirmed nor denied that its forces downed the Il-76, and Russia’s claim that the crash killed Ukrainian POWs couldn’t be independently verified. Ukrainian officials emphasized that Moscow didn’t ask for any specific stretch of airspace to be kept safe for a certain length of time, as it has for past prisoner exchanges.
Some Western intelligence assessments have suggested the plane was shot down by a missile from Ukraine, although they could not confirm the presence of POWs on board.
A French military official told The Associated Press that the country’s military concluded that Ukrainian forces used a battery of Patriot surface-to-air missiles to shoot down the Russian Il-76, firing from a distance of approximately 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) away.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to divulge the intelligence findings, said the Ukrainian battery apparently managed to stay hidden while getting closer to the target and then switched on its radars “just long enough to hit them.”
Another Western official also said the plane was downed by “a missile strike rather than any kind of mechanical failure,” and it’s almost certain the missile was fired from Ukrainian territory. The official said “it’s not yet clear” whether it was carrying Ukrainian POWs.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told the state RIA Novosti news agency on Friday that the Kremlin hadn’t received a Ukrainian request to hand over the bodies. Asked if Russia would be willing to hand them over, he later told reporters that the official probe into the plane’s downing was ongoing and it would be up to Russian law enforcement agencies to consider such a request.
Putin said Wednesday that Russia wouldn’t only welcome but would “insist” on an international inquiry into the plane’s downing that he described as a “crime” by Ukraine.
Yusov, the Ukrainian intelligence spokesperson, said in televised remarks that some of the Ukrainian POWs who were meant to be part of a prisoner exchange on the day of the plane crash were swapped Wednesday when about 200 Ukrainian prisoners of war returned home.
