Published January 27,2024
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Ukraine on Saturday pressed Russia to offer proof {that a} army aircraft shot down earlier within the week had been carrying dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of battle, because it claimed.
The newest twist within the bitter row over the incident got here as Ukrainian officers stated a Russian raid had killed two civilians close to their border.
Ukraine’s spy chief questioned why Russia had not proven any photographs of the our bodies of Ukrainian troopers that Moscow claims had been killed when a army aircraft was shot down.
Russia stated 65 Ukrainian prisoners of battle had been killed when Kyiv shot down an Ilyushin-76 army transport aircraft on Wednesday close to the border between the 2 nations.
While Kyiv has not outright denied Russia’s claims, it has questioned key components of its narrative — specifically, who was on board the plane.
“There are a number of factors that are unclear,” Kyrylo Budanov, chief of Ukraine’s GUR army intelligence stated in an interview with state TV.
“First of all, they did not show fields covered with corpses and remains,” he stated.
“If it happened as Russia claims, why does Russia … continue to hide the bodies?,” Budanov requested on Saturday.
– ‘There is nothing’ –
Russia’s Investigative Committee has revealed three movies of what it says is the crash website.
One confirmed a blurred close-up of a lifeless physique. In one other, a forensics workforce is sealing up a single physique bag.
A 3rd was grainy footage purporting to indicate autos transporting the prisoners to the aircraft earlier than it took off, however the high quality was too poor to confirm this.
“There are no corpses,” Budanov stated Saturday. “There is nothing.”
Kyiv has confirmed a prisoner trade was because of happen on the identical day and has not explicitly denied taking pictures down the aircraft.
But it stated Moscow didn’t request a short lived aerial ceasefire close to the border, because it had beforehand when POWs had been being flown to a scheduled trade.
Russian President Vladimir Putin stated Friday that Budanov’s GUR was conscious the prisoners had been going to be transferred by aircraft.
He stated it was “obvious” Ukrainian forces shot it down and had gone forward with the assault figuring out it may have been carrying their very own troops.
Kyiv has not but outlined its model of occasions, though Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has referred to as for a world investigation, and each side have opened prison probes.
Russian troops killed two civilians Saturday in a raid on the Ukrainian village of Andriivka, 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) from the border with Russia’s western Kursk area, native officers stated.
“This morning, an enemy reconnaissance and sabotage group brutally and cynically shot a brother and sister,” the Sumy regional administration stated in a press release.
The assault occurred inside a five-kilometre buffer zone alongside the border with Russia — an space the place Kyiv had requested residents to evacuate.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General stated the victims had been a 54-year-old man and a 68-year-old lady, killed whereas driving in an SUV.
In the Russian metropolis of Saint Petersburg, Putin renewed his assault on the Kyiv administration, claiming “the regime in Kyiv glorifies Hitler’s accomplices, the SS”.
He was talking as he visited a memorial to mark 80 years because the finish of the Nazi siege of Leningrad, as Saint Petersburg was then referred to as.
He was accompanied by Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko.
In Ukraine, three French fighters spoke to AFP to disclaim Russian claims that that they had been killed in a current strike.
Paris has accused Moscow of spreading disinformation about France’s position in Ukraine.
Source: www.anews.com.tr