KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine has repeatedly asked Russia to hand over the bodies of scores of prisoners of war who Moscow claimed were killed in the downing of a Russian military transport plane by Ukrainian forces, but Russia has refused, a Ukrainian intelligence official said.
Andrii Yusov, the spokesperson for Ukraine‘s military intelligence, in televised remarks late Thursday reaffirmed Ukraine‘s call for an international probe into the Jan. 24 crash that would determine whether the cargo plane carried weapons or passengers along with the crew.
Russia and Ukraine have traded accusations over the crash, with Moscow accusing Kyiv of killing its own men and Ukraine dismissing Moscow’s assertions as “rampant Russian propaganda.”
Kyiv has neither confirmed nor denied that its forces downed the Il-76, and Russia’s claim that the crash killed Ukrainian POWs couldn’t be independently verified. Ukrainian officials emphasized that Moscow didn’t ask for any specific stretch of airspace to be kept safe for a certain length of time, as it has for past prisoner exchanges.
Some Western intelligence assessments have suggested the plane was shot down by a missile from Ukraine, although they could not confirm the presence of POWs on board.
A French military official told The Associated Press that the country’s military concluded that Ukrainian forces used a battery of Patriot surface-to-air missiles to shoot down the Russian Il-76, firing from a distance of approximately 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) away.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to divulge the intelligence findings, said the Ukrainian battery apparently managed to stay hidden while getting closer to the target and then switched on its radars “just long enough to hit them.”
Another Western official also said the plane was downed by “a missile strike rather than any kind of mechanical failure,” and it’s almost certain the missile was fired from Ukrainian territory. The official said “it’s not yet clear” whether it was carrying Ukrainian POWs.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told the state RIA Novosti news agency on Friday that the Kremlin hadn’t received a Ukrainian request to hand over the bodies. Asked if Russia would be willing to hand them over, he later told reporters that the official probe into the plane’s downing was ongoing and it would be up to Russian law enforcement agencies to consider such a request.
Putin said Wednesday that Russia wouldn’t only welcome but would “insist” on an international inquiry into the plane’s downing that he described as a “crime” by Ukraine.
Yusov, the Ukrainian intelligence spokesperson, said in televised remarks that some of the Ukrainian POWs who were meant to be part of a prisoner exchange on the day of the plane crash were swapped Wednesday when about 200 Ukrainian prisoners of war returned home.
Russia’s Investigative Committee, the main state criminal investigation agency, said Thursday that its probe into the crash found that the Il-76 military transport plane was brought down by the U.S.-made Patriot air defense system, which Western allies – namely the U.S., Germany and the Netherlands – have supplied to Kyiv. The U.S. has provided Patriots to Ukraine with the understanding that they not be used outside of Ukraine
Russian officials claimed there were 74 people on board, including 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war, six crew members and three Russian servicemen. All were reported killed when the plane hit the ground and exploded in a giant fireball in the Belgorod region near Ukraine.
The Investigative Committee said investigators have found over 670 body fragments and identified all the crash victims.
The committee said that it also has recovered 116 fragments of two missiles that were fired from a Patriot system from near the village of Lyptsi in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine. It showed a video that purported to show some missile fragments lying in the snow with visible markings ostensibly proving their origin.
Russia, meanwhile, has continued to pummel Ukraine with long-range strikes, with the 1,500-kilometer (930-mile) front line remaining largely static as the conflict approaches the two-year mark.
In Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown, a drone attack damaged an energy infrastructure facility, leaving 100,000 recipients without electricity and 113 coal miners stranded underground, according to Mayor Oleksandr Vilkul. He said all the miners were brought to safety after electrical supply was partially restored.
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John Leicester in Paris and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.