Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he had summoned his military and intelligence chiefs to report on a plane crash over Russian territory that Moscow said killed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war (POW).
Russian officials accused Ukraine of shooting down the military aircraft over the Belgorod region on Wednesday, which they said was carrying 65 Ukrainians for a prisoner exchange and nine Russians.
Yesterday, Russian state news wires reported missile debris had been found at the site.
Photo: AP
Authorities in Kyiv initially limited themselves to appeals to avoid spreading unverified information, but in a statement late in the evening Zelenskiy called for an international investigation.
“The key word now is facts,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address, adding that they had to be established to the greatest extent possible given that the Il-76 crashed outside of Ukrainian territory.
In 2022, Russia accused Kyiv of using US-provided high-precision weapons to kill more than 40 Ukrainian POWs in a detention center in the occupied Donetsk region.
Ukraine disputed the claim, saying Russian forces destroyed the facility to conceal the torture of prisoners, accuse Ukraine of war crimes and disrupt the flow of Western weapons.
Russia is now seizing on the crash to sow domestic discontent in Ukraine and undermine Western will to continue giving military support, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in a report yesterday.
“It is obvious that the Russians are messing with the lives of Ukrainian captives, the feelings of their relatives, and the emotions of our society,” Zelenskiy said.
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