Ukraine's military intelligence has accused Russia of deliberately jeopardising the lives of prisoners of war, after Moscow said Kyiv had downed a plane with 65 PoWs on board.

 The Ilyushin-76 military transport plane crashed in Russia's southern Belgorod region near Ukraine.

Russia's ministry of defence said Ukrainian PoWs were being flown into Belgorod for a prisoner exchange.

Kyiv said it was not told to ensure safe airspace as on previous occasions.


The Ukrainian military intelligence statement is being seen as a tacit acknowledgement that it shot the plane down, although it stressed it had no reliable information about who was on board.


Ria Novosti news agency said another nine people were on the plane, including six crew.


Video shared on social media showed a plane going down followed by an explosion and a fireball near the village of Yablonovo, 70km (44 miles) to the north-east of the city of Belgorod, at around 11:00 local time (08:00 GMT).


The regional governor in Russia's Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said the plane crashed in a field near a residential area and that everyone on board had died.


Ukraine's general staff, quoted by the Ukrainska Pravda website, said initially that the plane was transporting missiles for Russia's S-300 air defence systems. It made no mention of prisoners of war.


None of the details surrounding those on board can be independently verified, but Ukraine's military intelligence said it was Russia's responsibility "to ensure the safety of our defenders under the agreements that had been reached".


On this occasion it said it had not been informed that the airspace had to be safeguarded "at the defined time, which is something that had happened on numerous occasions before".


"This can point to Russia's deliberate actions aimed at putting the lives and safety of the PoWs under threat," it added.


Ukraine and Russia have taken part in a number of prisoner swaps since the start of the war.


BBC Russia Editor Steve Rosenberg said it was clear that Russia was using the attack on the plane to try to portray Ukraine as the aggressor, even though it was Russia that launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.


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