\n Russia said Wednesday that an IL-76 military transport plane carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war had crashed in the western Belgorod region, bordering Ukraine.\n<\/p>\n
\n Unverified videos on social media showed a large plane, purportedly in the Belgorod region, falling from the sky on its side before crashing in a fireball.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"At around 11 am Moscow time (0800 GMT), an IL-76 aircraft crashed in the Belgorod region during a routine flight,\" Moscow's defence ministry told Russian news agencies.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"On board were 65 captured Ukrainian army servicemen being transported to the Belgorod region for exchange, six crew members and three escorts,\" it said.\n<\/p>\n
\n AFP was not able to immediately verify Russia's claim, and the fate of the passengers was not immediately clear.\n<\/p>\n
\n Vyacheslav Volodin, the top lawmaker in Russia's lower house of parliament, said the plane had been \"shot down\" by Kyiv and blamed Western missiles.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"They shot their own soldiers in the air. Their own,\" Volodin told lawmakers in a plenary session. \"Our pilots, who were carrying out a humanitarian mission, were shot down.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n The crash occurred in the Korochansky district, northeast of the region's capital, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Now an investigation team and emergency services are working on the site. I have changed my working schedule and travelled to the district,\" Gladkov said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Gladkov had earlier announced a missile alert over the region, but it was not clear if the two events were connected.\n<\/p>\n
\n In Kyiv, local media initially cited sources in the Ukrainian military as saying that its army downed the plane, and that it was transporting missiles.\n<\/p>\n
\n But that claim was later retracted.\n<\/p>\n
\n The issue of prisoners of war is sensitive in both countries.\n<\/p>\n
\n In 2022, Russia and Ukraine accused each other of carrying out deadly bombardments on a jail holding dozens of captured Ukrainian servicemen in Kremlin-controlled Olenivka, in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region.\n<\/p>\n
\n Both Moscow and Kyiv blamed each other for the incident, which President Volodymyr Zelensky called a \"Russian war crime\".\n<\/p>\n
\n - Strikes on Ukraine -\n<\/p>\n
\n Moscow and Kyiv have also recently accused each other of a sharp escalation in attacks on civilian areas over the past two months.\n<\/p>\n
\n Russian strikes wounded nine people in the eastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv, the region's governor said Wednesday.\n<\/p>\n
\n Regional governor Oleg Sinegubov said Moscow's forces had fired S-300 surface-to-air missiles at the city, which lies next to Ukraine's border with Russia.\n<\/p>\n
\n Russian forces had aimed to wrest control of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, early in their invasion, launched in February 2022.\n<\/p>\n
\n But Ukrainian forces pushed back Moscow's army, which has been routinely shelling the city since.\n<\/p>\n
\n Separately, the governor of the southern Kherson region said Russian forces had killed a total of five residents of his region over the course of the day before.\n<\/p>\n
\n Six more people were wounded across the region, which the Kremlin claims is part of Russia, the governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on social media.\n<\/p>\n
\n Both Russian and Ukraine have stepped up strikes on each others' cities and critical infrastructure.\n<\/p>\n
\n Kyiv has urged its allies to help bolster its air defence systems to ward off Russian attacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russia said Wednesday that an IL-76 military transport plane carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war had crashed in the western Belgorod region, bordering Ukraine. Unverified videos on social media showed a large plane, purportedly in the Belgorod region, falling from the sky on its side before crashing in a fireball. \"At around 11 am Moscow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-127546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n