The UN Security Council, meeting on Thursday January 25, turned into a contest between Ukraine and Russia. The two countries maintained their mutual accusations regarding the crash of a Russian plane which occurred the day before above the Belgorod region, near the Ukrainian border. According to Russia, all 74 passengers on the plane, including 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war, died.
“All the information we have today shows that we are dealing with a premeditated and well-thought-out crime,” said Russian Deputy Ambassador to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy, whose country had requested the emergency meeting. The Russian diplomat accused the Ukrainians of having wanted to “sabotage” a prisoner exchange procedure “in the most barbaric way”.
Ukrainian Deputy Ambassador Khrystyna Hayovyshyn, present at the meeting, rejected these accusations, saying that if the presence of prisoners on board was confirmed, Russia would have to account for a “new violation of international humanitarian law”.
Prisoner exchange planned
The two countries have thus maintained opposing versions of the facts. kyiv, accused of having fired an anti-aircraft missile at the aircraft, has so far not denied it. But Ukrainian military intelligence insisted on the lack of “reliable and complete information” regarding the identity of the passengers on board. Ukraine acknowledges that an exchange of prisoners was planned, but claims to have “not been informed” of the need to secure the airspace in the area. According to the Ukrainian ambassador, this could be “the first case of use in the air of human shields to cover the transport of missiles” by Russia.
While the Ukrainian special services announced the opening of an investigation into the crash, President Volodymyr Zelensky made a similar request internationally. But the search could be difficult: the device is in Russia, and the device’s black boxes have been recovered by Russian investigators, according to a state agency.
Moscow, for its part, opened an investigation for “terrorism”, and the committee responsible for clarifying the facts released a video from the scene of the incident on Thursday evening – which AFP does not have, for the moment. , was able to confirm from an independent source. In the images, the wreckage of the Il-76 military plane, whose length reaches almost 50 meters, is not visible and debris is difficult to identify. “During the inspection of the accident site, human remains and the aircraft flight recorders were found,” investigators also said. But Russia has so far provided no proof of the identity of the passengers on board.
A sign of the uncertainty and the many remaining questions, international reactions have been rather rare. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) refused to make any “speculation”, saying it “does not know what happened”. The spokesperson for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Christophe Lemoine, said he was “not able to say whether the Russian assertions are true or not.” “Russia has accustomed us to lying on these subjects,” he added.