Key Points
- Russia has accused Ukraine of shooting down a military transport aircraft carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war.
- Ukraine did not directly confirm it had shot down the plane, nor that Ukrainian prisoners were on board.
- The UN Security Council will gather at Russia's request on Thursday to discuss the incident.
Russia has accused Ukraine of shooting down a military transport plane carrying 65 captured Ukrainian soldiers to a prisoner exchange in what it called a "barbaric act of terrorism" that had killed 74 people.
Ukraine called for full clarification of the circumstances of the incident and did not directly confirm it had shot down the plane, nor that Ukrainian prisoners were on board.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his evening address, said: "It is clear that the Russians are playing with the lives of Ukrainian prisoners, the feelings of their loved ones and the emotions of our society."
The Russian defence ministry said six Russian crew members and three Russian soldiers had also been on the Ilyushin Il-76 military transport plane shot down near the Russian city of Belgorod near the Ukrainian border.
After a long pause, the Ukrainian military said it would continue to destroy Russian military transport aircraft it believed were carrying missiles with which to strike Ukraine.
Here's what we know so far.
What was the plane and who was on board?
The aircraft was an Ilyushin Il-76, a large military transport plane designed to carry troops, cargo or weapons.
Russia said that as well as the 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war there were six Russian crew members and three Russian soldiers on board.
The plane crashed in a huge fireball, killing all 74 people on board, the Russian defence ministry said.
Ukrainian military intelligence said it had no reliable information about who was aboard the crashed plane.
The Russian plane reportedly crashed at a residential area near Yablonovo in the Belgorod region. Credit: AP
"They knew very well that the plane was en route, where it was going and the operators of (Ukrainian) surface-to-air missile systems cannot mistake transport planes for military planes or helicopters as targets.
"It was done deliberately to sabotage the prisoner exchange."
Where did it happen?
The crash took place just northeast of Belgorod in western Russia, close to the border with Ukraine.
The Belgorod region has been the target of frequent cross-border attacks by Ukraine but this, if the number of those killed is confirmed, would be by far the deadliest single incident of its kind in the almost two-year-old war to take place inside Russia's internationally recognised territory.
What caused the crash?
Russia's defence ministry accused the "Kyiv regime" of shooting down the plane, saying Russian radar had detected the launch of two Ukrainian missiles from Ukraine's Kharkiv region.
"By committing this terrorist act, the Ukrainian leadership has showed its true face. It disregarded the lives of its own citizens," the ministry said in a statement.
Earlier, Kartapolov had spoken of three missiles and said they were either US Patriots or German-made IRIS-Ts.
He said investigators would determine exactly what kind of missiles were used when they recovered fragments from the crash site.
The Ukrainian military didn't confirm that Ukraine had shot down the plane, and said Russia's accusations could be "a planned action to destabilise the situation in Ukraine and weaken international support for our state".
It said it had noticed more Russian military transport aircraft landing in Belgorod, something it linked to Russian missile strikes on Kharkiv and other Ukrainian cities.
The UN Security Council will gather at Russia's request on Thursday to discuss the incident.
What was the planned prisoner exchange?
Russia's defence ministry said an exchange had been due to take place at the Kolotilovka checkpoint on the border between Russia and Ukraine.
It said the plane that was shot down had been flying from the Chkalovsky airbase near Moscow to Belgorod, in which case it would have been in the final stage of its flight.
Ukrainian military intelligence confirmed a swap was planned for Wednesday and said Kyiv had met all the terms for it, but it was not informed by Russia about the means of transport for the prisoners of war, and their routes.
It said that unlike in previous exchanges, Ukraine had not been asked to guarantee the security of airspace over Belgorod at a specific time.
Kartapolov said the plane had not been escorted by Russian fighter planes because the flight had been agreed with the Ukrainians in advance.
He said a second Il-76 transport plane carrying around 80 more Ukrainian soldiers to the exchange had managed to turn around.
Russia and Ukraine have carried out several big prisoner swaps in the course of the war.
Russian state TV journalist Margarita Simonyan published what she said was a list of the 65 names of the Ukrainian POWs on the plane. Reuters could not independently confirm it.
