By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
MOSCOW/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Russia accused Ukraine on Wednesday of shooting down a Russian military transport plane that killed all 74 on board, including 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war.
The Russian Ministry of Defense said six Russian crew members and three Russian soldiers were also on the Ilyushin Il-76 military aircraft shot down near the Russian city of Belgorod near the Ukrainian border.
Ukraine did not directly confirm it had downed the plane nor that Ukrainian prisoners were on board.
But after a long pause, the Ukrainian military said it would continue to destroy Russian military transport aircraft it believed were carrying missiles to strike Ukraine.
Local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said the “transport plane crashed in the Korochansky district. It fell in a field near the village. All those on board were killed.”
He added that the crash site has been cordoned off, and an investigation is being carried out, including by search and rescue specialists.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said the plane crashed while “65 captured Ukrainian army servicemen were being transported to the Belgorod region for exchange as well as six crew members and three escorts.” The Kremlin said it would “look into” the reported crash.
SHOCKED RESIDENTS
Video footage seen by Worthy News showed a massive fireball over the area as shocked residents reacted to the horrific scene.
The crash comes while Russian-Ukrainian clashes continue in Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War Two, which killed and injured hundreds of thousands of people.
Wednesday’s incident was due to further complicate efforts to come to agreements between Moscow and Kyiv on how to end an armed conflict that on the ground often resembles tactics of the First World War.
With investigations ongoing, the usually well-informed Ukrainska Pravda outlet said it corrected its previous report that the downing of the Il-76 transport plane aircraft was Ukraine’s work.
It said it had wrongly cited Ukrainian military sources saying Kyiv “shot down” the plane as it carried S-300 missiles.
However, questions remained over what caused the deadly crash.
Copyright 1999-2024 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
Latest News from Worthy News
Christian residents in the Dutch town of Urk, known for its many churches and fishing traditions, are providing shelter to Jews after the Netherlands’ first pogrom since World War Two.
The ‘Days of Repentance’ operation launched by Israel against Iran in late October targeted and destroyed a highly secretive nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, according to Axios.
A United Nations committee has agreed to tackle “hate speech” and “misinformation” globally through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and media, despite worries the approach may “stifle pluralistic debate.”
Christians in Myanmar’s Rakhine state face continued persecution by the country’s Buddhist military junta (Tatmadaw), which has proved itself violently hostile to believers and recently imposed new restrictions on church services, International Christian Concern (ICC) reports.
Brief scuffles broke out, and soccer fans whistled and booed as the Israeli anthem played at the start of the France-Israel match in Paris following a pogrom against Jews in the Netherlands, officials said Friday.
China’s President Xi Jinping has inaugurated a controversial massive port on the edge of Peru’s coastal desert that locals fear will leave many of them without a hopeful future.
With pornography increasingly and freely available to minors on the internet, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) has called on the Canadian parliament to support a bill that would hold pornography platforms accountable to “ensure child sexual abuse materials and intimate images shared without consent are not uploaded to their sites,” Christian Daily International (CDI) reports.