It\u2019s still unclear why a Russian military transport aircraft crashed\u00a0in the Belgorod region near the Ukraine border\u00a0on Wednesday, whether because it was brought down by a missile or suffered some catastrophic technical failure. But all\u00a074 people\u00a0on board were killed, according to Russian authorities. <\/p>\n
The first images of the wreckage on the ground are inconclusive; one video shows the last seconds of the plane as it hurtles towards earth before a large fireball erupts. <\/p>\n
But the Russian authorities have\u00a0claimed\u00a0that Ukrainian missiles were responsible \u2013 and that they killed 65 of their own prisoners of war,\u00a0along with six crew members and three Russian personnel,\u00a0who were on board the Ilyushin Il-76. <\/p>\n
The Russian Defense Ministry said the plane was destroyed by an anti-aircraft missile system deployed in the area of Liptsy in\u00a0Ukraine\u2019s\u00a0Kharkiv region, some\u00a050 miles\u00a0(80 kilometers)\u00a0from where the plane came down. It said radar equipment had detected the launches. <\/p>\n
The Defense Ministry also claimed that \u201cthe Ukrainian leadership knew very well that, according to established practice, today Ukrainian military personnel would be transported by military transport aircraft to the Belgorod airfield for exchange\u201d at the Kolotilovka checkpoint on the Russian border with the Ukrainian region of Sumy. <\/p>\n
In response, Ukraine\u2019s military command said it regarded Russian military aircraft approaching Belgorod as legitimate targets but stopped short of acknowledging it fired at a Russian transport plane. <\/p>\n
The 50-mile distance from Liptsy to the crash site would be beyond most Ukrainian ground-to-air missile systems. A Ukrainian defense intelligence official did confirm that a prisoner exchange had been due to happen on Wednesday, but did not acknowledge knowing the logistical details of the Russian side of the swap. Another Ukrainian military source was quoted as claiming that the plane was carrying Russian missiles, not prisoners. <\/p>\n
So one question is whether the Ukrainians were indeed aware of the timing and route of the aircraft\u00a0that the Russians say was\u00a0bringing\u00a0prisoners to the site of the exchange, and additionally whether that information would have been conveyed to front-line units across the border from Belgorod. <\/p>\n
The plane\u2019s two flight recorders could, however, provide answers. An emergency services representative told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti on Thursday that \u201cboth flight recorders \u2013 flight parameter recording device and voice recorder \u2013 have been found\u201d in good condition and handed over to investigators. <\/p>\n
But there are already other ramifications from this disaster. <\/p>\n
Andrey Kartapolov, who is chairman of the Duma Defense Committee in Moscow, made a significant allegation in claiming that the missiles fired were from US-made Patriot or German-made IRIS-T systems that have been supplied to Ukraine, without offering any evidence. Ukraine has pledged not to use foreign-donated weapons to attack Russian territory and this would have been a highly significant departure from that policy. In any case, the IRIS-T would not have had the range to hit the Ilyushin from the nearest Ukrainian-held territory. A Patriot deployed (at considerable risk) so close to the border with Russia would have been within range of the plane. <\/p>\n
Some observers are also pointing out that Russian missile defenses in the area were on high alert Wednesday, and that a Ukrainian drone had been brought down shortly before the plane crashed. However, the governor of Belgorod said that had happened in a location to the west of the city,\u00a0which would put it at least 37 miles (60 kilometers) from the site where the Ilyushin crashed. <\/p>\n
Another\u00a0puzzling element\u00a0<\/strong>is that according to the Russian version\u00a0of events,\u00a0the Ukrainian PoWs were guarded by just three Russian\u00a0personnel on board the plane (besides the crew.) A former Ukrainian PoW, Maksym Kolesnikov,\u00a0said Wednesday in a post on X\u00a0that when he had been transported by plane from Bryansk to Belgorod, there were about 20 military police for 50 prisoners. <\/p>\n So this disaster already has multiple political dimensions and as yet a lot of unanswered questions. It has quickly become another episode in the information war that has been a constant in this conflict. <\/p>\n Dmytro Lubinets,\u00a0Ukraine\u2019s human rights ombudsman,\u00a0said Wednesday that \u201cinformation warfare is no less important than fighting at the front\u2026 The enemy is insidious. We all know what terrible methods Russia can use to destabilize Ukrainian society.\u201d <\/p>\n Indeed the Russian Defense Ministry in its statement said that \u201cby committing this terrorist attack, the Ukrainian leadership showed its true colors \u2013 it neglected the lives of its citizens.\u201c <\/p>\n It\u2019s worth recalling that Russia alleged that Ukraine killed its own prisoners of war in a strike on a camp in Olenivka in Donetsk 18 months ago, a claim that after extensive forensic investigation looked extremely dubious. <\/p>\n Then, as most likely in this instance, no independent on-the-ground analysis was possible. <\/p>\n But a large Russian military aircraft without anti-missile defenses approaching Belgorod \u2013 itself a frequent target of Ukrainian drones \u2013 would have been a tempting and valuable target for Ukraine. <\/p>\n It would therefore have been a flight of considerable risk \u2013\u00a0<\/em>unless the Ukrainians had been notified of its purpose, as the Russians have claimed. On the whole, Russian Il-76 aircraft stay well beyond the range of Ukrainian missiles; this would be the first time since the full-scale\u00a0Russian invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago that one of them has been shot down. <\/p>\n But the Ukrainians have extended the range and frequency of their attacks into Russia, using drones, missiles and sabotage. Earlier this month, the Ukrainian military claimed to have shot down one of the Russians\u2019 most advanced early detection aircraft, the A-50, over the Sea of Azov. There\u2019s been no visual evidence of the wreckage, and the Russian Defense Ministry has not responded to the claim. Some analysts believe that the Ukrainians may have repurposed a Patriot battery to carry out that attack, but there has been no confirmation. Patriot missiles generally have a range of just under 100 miles. <\/p>\n For Ukraine, at a time when the battlefield is in stalemate and there are few victories to celebrate, attacking Russian bases, ships, aircraft and infrastructure well beyond the border has become a different way to disrupt the enemy\u2019s military machine. <\/p>\n But if evidence emerges to confirm the version of events being offered up by the Russian Defense Ministry and others in Moscow, what would have been a coup for Ukrainian air defenses may instead have been a horrendous mistake. <\/p>\n\n It\u2019s still unclear why a Russian military transport aircraft crashed\u00a0in the Belgorod region near the Ukraine border\u00a0on Wednesday, whether because it was brought down by a missile or suffered some catastrophic technical failure. But all\u00a074 people\u00a0on board were killed, according to Russian authorities. The first images of the wreckage on the ground are inconclusive; one <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14579,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14578","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}