The Armed Forces of Ukraine shot down an Il-76 aircraft over Belgorod.
The IL-76 military aircraft was transporting 65 Ukrainian POW for exchange with Russian POW, along with 6 crew members and 3 escorts.
The captured Ukrainian servicemen were being transported to the Belgorod region for exchange.
Another Il-76 carrying 80 Ukrainian prisoners of war turned back, said the head of the Duma Defense Committee Andrei Kartapolov.
“The Ukrainian leadership was well aware of the impending exchange and was informed of how the prisoners would be delivered,” he said during a speech in the State Duma
After the crash of the IL-76 in the Belgorod region, prisoner exchanges between the Russian Federation and Ukraine will apparently be put on pause.
Learning from the IDF, I see.
These quotes from the Guardian are really telling. They spend the whole article denying that it happened the way Russia claimed it did, but then they slip in these two sentences towards the end:
"Ukrainian military intelligence later confirmed that the planned prisoner exchange had not taken place on Wednesday.
The Ukrainska Pravda newspaper initially cited sources which said Kyiv’s armed forces had shot down the plane but later withdrew the report."
Yeah this one is pretty hard to deny, even for the bullshit artists in the pro-Ukraine media.
Also, do you mind giving us a link to that article that you are talking about? Just for reference.
Lmao you should take a look at r/worldnews if you think liberals are going to have any trouble denying this.
You see the plane exploded when it was shot down which means there were no prisoners just a bunch of illegal missles they were smuggling.
I’d rather not wade into a cesspool thank you very much.
Why does the side the western media wants you to support always end up killing their own people on purpose?
Fascists gonna fash.
How are NAFO losers going to explain this one?
Click the links, there’s plenty of that there.
Do you want to go down the “Russia shot it down as a false flag” “russia crashed it accidently because they’re all drunk” or “ukraine shot it down and actually there were no pows just missles because it exploded” angle?
I saw one say that Russia was using the POWs as human shields because there were allegedly missiles onboard. Which is cartoonish.
I’ve been seeing that narrative go around too. It’s so embarrassing.
The usual: “Russia did it”
Whose plane it was? If it was a Russian plane its obvious Ukraine did it. There would be an argument if the plane was Ukranian.
It was Russian. But NAFO are always claiming Russia shells its own people in Donetsk so it’s not a big leap from that to Russians shooting down their own plane. It doesn’t have to make sense. Plenty of westerners will buy it because they have been sold on the idea of Russians being comic book villains who do evil things that make no logical sense just because they’re evil.
Yeah, destroy an expensive aircraft, kill pilots, crew, escort, POWs for exchange just to show how mean and evil you are.
What a fucking cursed timeline.
destroy your own aircraft just to own the libs in media 😂 these guys are ridiculous.
This is a bit of a tangent but It’s really bizarre seeing people be Pro-Ukraine and Pro-Palestine when the former are the exact kind of people you oppose in the latter. Because this whole “Russians are too stupid to do x, y and z” “They’re naturally violent” “They’re always schemeing” word for word the exact same thing the zionists say about Gazans.
It was really funny to see liberals before a narrative had been established.
The russians crashed the plane because obviously they’re all drunk because of their Slavic genes but also glorious ukraine shot it down, oh shit there were Ukrainian pows on it uhh Russia shot it down on purpose to kill Ukrainian pows but also the plane was full of missles because it exploded when it crashed so the russians are lying to save face.
Or something
You can tell that a lot of them misread the headline as “Russian POWs shot down” and got real smug about killing helpless men.
Helpless men who they believe were dragged off the streets and shoved into a uniform with no choice
Pretty sure this many years of propaganda have entirely dehumanized Russians in their mind, they wouldn’t even consider them men anymore.
It has been quite fascinating to watch the speed at which their narrative changed, from first celebrating the shoot down only to then turn around and edit tweets and headlines to remove the evidence of their prior glee, to making up a bunch of conspiracy theories about either Russia having done it or Russia somehow purposely goading Ukraine into doing it:
https://nitter.net/DD_Geopolitics/status/1750268317624099200
Update: Nazi propaganda outlet admits that Ukraine knowingly targeted the plane full of POWs in hopes of getting a couple of “senior Russian officials” who were supposed to be on that plane (but weren’t):
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST
RENEGING ON A POW DEAL BY KILLING YOUR OWN SOLDIERS, SIXTY FUCKING PEOPLE to get a couple of officials AND THEY DIDN’T EVEN GET THEMUnfathomable, I’m speechless, I can’t put into words how utterly demonically inhuman these monsters are
From a purely cynical point of view this makes a lot of sense. Some 40-50 poorly trained, unmotivated conscripts, who surrendered and are thus likely to be even less useful as soldiers in the future, plus a dozen or two azovites for a whole Russian plane with its hard to replace professional crew that trained for years, and maybe the chance at scoring a big propaganda victory killing some Russian officials. The trade off sounds worth it if you put no value on human life other than what it can do to improve your position in the war.
It may be that Ukraine considers it came out on top in this exchange even without getting the officials. They have more batches of 60 people than Russia does transport planes.
From a purely cynical point of view this makes a lot of sense.
Does it, though? The west may be behind Ukraine, but for the rest of the world (and Russians) who see what is going on, such actions are extremely telling- that Ukraine cannot be trusted, and the only effective language against these Nazis is fighting fire with fire, and playing hardball. And from a domestic, purely cynical point of view, it becomes worse yet (particularly if things happen as they just did)- the people, and even the rank-and-file Azovites, can see that their “boys” were coming home- until they weren’t, courtesy of their rogue state of a government.
The trade off sounds worth it when you remove not only the value of human life, but the human element altogether; I suspect however this had went, it would not have sat well with most Ukranians, with the armed forces and even possibly sizable parts of the neo-Nazi brigades within it, and it would probably have left Ukraine on a worse footing (outside of the west) than it was prior, diplomatically, in internal politics, etc. almost regardless of how things played out.
It does when you look at how the UA propaganda operates - they are completely convinced (and not without reason) they can say anything they want and their nafoid groupies in the west will not only eat it uncritically, but even spin it on their benefit even without trying. Just look at Zelensky how absolutely crushed he is, how the entire UA govt is crushed, how they propaganda reacts every time they hear “no”.
Simply put, they do not operate in the same reality other people are, they got high on their own supply in 2022, and it is not even unique in history, but rather typical of nazis.
When Zelensky said Ukraine will be a big Israel he wasn’t joking. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/5/zelenskyy-says-wants-ukraine-to-become-a-big-israel
They want to be Israel, but they’re unaware that they don’t have the same protection from scrutiny outside of their bot networks.
Yeah this does have a bit of a Hannibal directive vibe to it. But i think it’s more likely that this was yet another Ukrainian fuck-up.
I mean i wouldn’t put it past them to decide that trading the lives of 60 conscripts for one Russian transport plane plus crew was worth it. Problem is they lost more than just these POWs, they also lost all of the POWs that they would have gotten back in future exchanges that are now not going to happen anymore seeing as Ukraine can’t even be trusted to abide by promises to guarantee the prisoners’ safe transport.
oh man, shooting down their own pows and the pentagon running out of cash
it is so fucking joever
Man, they are desperate to be back in the news again aren’t they?
Except apparently they have reached the conclusion that the coverage “Israel” is getting is something to be jealous of, so they want to up their war crime count accordingly.
the new training manual for dispersal from Bankova includes the narrative that the Russians themselves shot down Il in order to blame Kyiv
Not even Polish media dared to said that, they only said it was a “crash”.
Donetsk shelled itself/Was shelled by Russia
Russia blowed up it’s own pipeline
Russia shot down it’s own Il
Don’t forget Russia blowing up its only bridge to Crimea.
the real Russian mindgame was forcing Ukraine to issue a stamp commemorating the bombing
Don’t forget Russia shelling its own positions around a nuclear plant.
If destroying Russian assets is a good thing, does that make Russia valiant freedom fighters for destroying all their own infrastructure?
And the dam which supplied water to Crimea and to the nuclear plant they control. Blowing it up also flooded their defense lines.
At this point is Ukraine even doing anything at all?
Making money disappear, snorting epic lines of coke, having wholesome torchmarches for their hero Jaryslav the jewslayer.
Why would Russia shoot down their own plane filled with Ukranian POWs? That doesn’t make logicial sense.
Of course not unless you’re firmly sitting in the Russia Bad territory. Libs invested 2 years of their intensive online life to root for the team UA and they simply cannot be wrong, no matter what. Zelensky could personally slaughter kids with a knife and baseball bat in the city square of Kiev, loudly screaming “heil hitler”, with thousands of witnesses all making videos of that and they would still spin this to “Russia bad”.
Latest version in this case is apparently: “Russia executed PoW’s for no reason and pulled this as elaborate ruse to cover it up”.
I’ve been waiting for Ukraine to come to the negotiating table and all this madness to stop but that probably won’t ever happen. The “Putler is committing genocide against white people” narrative is just too strong.
That’s sad.
