There are conflict reports over which country’s forces shot down an Ilyushin Il-76 plane in Russia’s Belgorod region on Wednesday. The plane was carrying 74 passengers, 65 of whom were Ukrainian prisoners of war en route to a swap for Russian PoWs. A senior Russian lawmaker said Russian forces notified the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Armed Forces of the flight 15 minutes before it entered contested airspace. Ukrainian military intelligence denied that it received a request from Russia to notify air defenses in the region about the incoming PoW flight. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia of “playing with the lives of Ukrainian prisoners” and called for an international investigation. Russia currently has sole access to the crash site, where it collected the plane’s black box for further examination at a defense ministry laboratory.
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