Ukraine says it has intelligence suggesting only five bodies were delivered from the crash site of a Russian military transport plane to a nearby morgue, a Ukraine military intelligence official told CNN, casting doubt on Moscow’s claim that dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed in the explosion.
Moscow and Kyiv gave conflicting accounts of how the Ilyushin Il-76 was downed Wednesday in Russia’s Belgorod region, which neighbors eastern Ukraine. Moscow says the plane was transporting Ukrainian prisoners of war, while Kyiv says it was carrying Russian missiles to be used in further strikes on Ukraine.
But the latest comments indicate Kyiv’s growing confidence that the IL-76 plane, which crashed Wednesday morning in the village of Yablonovo in Russia’s Belgorod region, may not have been carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war ahead of an exchange, as Moscow claimed.
Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence (DI), told CNN the number of bodies brought to the morgue matched the number of crew members on the plane. “No other bodies were detected,” he said.
Russian officials recently claimed that they gave Ukraine advanced notice of it flying over, but same as everything else their counter intel people can come up with, they don’t even have plausible evidence, they’re just throwing up a he said / she said between one side that’s been exaggerating some claims and one side that is outright lying and gaslighting the world on a daily basis.