Where are the bodies? Ukraine presses Russia for proof of POW deaths
- Kyiv has not outright denied Moscow’s claims that it shot down a military plane, but it has raised questions about whether the prisoners were actually on board
- Russia has released 3 videos of the crash site, but Ukraine’s spy chief asked why they did not show a ‘field of corpses’ if dozens of POWs were killed
Ukraine on Saturday pressed Russia to provide proof that a military plane shot down earlier in the week had been carrying dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war, as it claimed.
Ukraine’s spy chief questioned why Russia had not shown any images of the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers that Moscow claims were killed when a military plane was shot down.
Russia said 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed when Kyiv shot down an Ilyushin-76 military transport plane on Wednesday near the border between the two countries.
While Kyiv has not outright denied Russia’s claims, it has questioned key parts of its narrative – in particular, who was on board the aircraft.
“There are a number of factors that are unclear,” Kyrylo Budanov, chief of Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence said in an interview with state television.
“First of all, they did not show fields covered with corpses and remains,” he said.
