Duma Speaker accuses kyiv of shooting down military plane that crashed in Belgorod region
“They killed their own soldiers in the air, their mothers, their children were waiting for them”, accused Wednesday the speaker of the Duma, lower house of the Russian Parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, before the deputies, for whom Kiev is responsible for the crash of the military plane which occurred in the morning in the Belgorod region, with 65 Ukrainian prisoners in its edge. He added : “They shot down our pilots who were carrying out a humanitarian mission (…) with American and German missiles.
Another deputy, chairman of the defense committee in the Duma, also made these accusations. “Ukrainian leaders were fully aware of the upcoming exchange and were briefed on how the prisoners would be delivered”said Andrei Kartapolov, according to Russian media.
Since the start of its offensive against Ukraine, Russia has experienced several air disasters involving army aircraft. Ukraine has shot down Russian aircraft in the past. It thus claimed last week to have shot down an A-50 spy plane (Russian equivalent of the Western Awacs) and destroyed an Il-22 command plane.
In Russia, the plane carrying the leader of the Wagner armed group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, crashed in August 2023 during a flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg, killing him and his top lieutenants just weeks after he attempted to lead an abortive mutiny. The Russian authorities then denied any involvement.
In October 2022, a Su-34 fighter bomber crashed into a building in the city of Yeïsk, on the Russian coast of the Sea of Azov, killing 15 people.