A Russian military transportation aircraft said to be carrying 65 Ukrainian soldiers for a prisoner exchange has crashed near the border with Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday.
“An Il-76 airplane crashed in the Belgorod region at around 11:00 a.m. Moscow time while performing a scheduled flight,” the state-run news agency RIA Novosti quoted the Defense Ministry as saying.
“There were 65 captured servicemen of the [Ukrainian Armed Forces], six crew members and three escorts,” it added.
Telegram news channels with links to Russian law enforcement agencies reported earlier that all those on board had been killed.
The plane was said to have crashed in the Belgorod region’s Korochansky district, some 50 kilometers east of the border with Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.
Russia’s Defense Ministry did not specify whether there were any survivors, mentioning only that an Aerospace Forces commission had been dispatched to the crash site to conduct an investigation.
The Kremlin said it could not comment on the latest incident.
Belgorod region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said he was en route to join investigators and emergency crews at the crash site.
Gladkov had announced a rocket attack alert around an hour before the Il-76 crash.
Anonymous sources within Ukraine's Armed Forces told the news outlet Ukrainska Pravda that Wednesday's plane crash in the Belgorod region was “their job,” claiming that the Russian Il-76 was carrying S-300 anti-aircraft missiles.
The Moscow Times could not independently verify either the Russian Defense Ministry's claims or the Ukrainska Pravda report.
This is a developing story.
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