MOSCOW: Russia accused Ukraine on Wednesday of deliberately shooting down a Russian military transport plane carrying 65 captured Ukrainian soldiers to a prisoner exchange in what it called a barbaric act of terrorism that had killed a total of 74 people.

The Russian defence ministry said six Russian crew members and three Russian soldiers had been on the Ilyushin Il-76 military transport plane shot down near the Russian city of Belgorod near the Ukrainian border.

“The Ukrainian leadership was well aware that, in accordance with established practice, Ukrainian servicemen would be transported by military transport aircraft to the Belgorod airfield today to be exchanged,” a ministry statement said.

“According to an earlier agreement, this event was to take place in the afternoon at the Kolotilovka checkpoint on the Russian-Ukrainian border,” it said.

“By committing this terrorist act, the Ukrainian leadership has showed its true face. It disregarded the lives of its own citizens.” Russia’s foreign ministry called the shooting down ‘a barbaric act’. Video posted on the Telegram messaging app by Baza, a channel linked to Russian security services, showed a large aircraft falling towards the ground near the village of Yablonovo in the Belgorod region and exploding in a vast fireball.

Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence spokesperson Andriy Yusov told the Radio Svoboda outlet that a prisoner exchange had been planned for Wednesday.

Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda initially cited military sources as saying Kyiv had shot down the plane because it was carrying S-300 missiles, but later corrected the story saying that information had not been confirmed by other sources. Andrei Kartapolov, a lawmaker in Russia’s parliament, said in a TV interview with the SHOT outlet that it was impossible for the operators of Ukrainian surface-to-air missile systems to mistake transport planes for military planes or helicopters as targets.

Published in Dawn, January 25th, 2024