According to expert Emil Kastehelme, based on the current information, it is impossible to assess whether there were prisoners of war or missiles on the plane.
An expert following the war in Ukraine Emil Kastehelmi considers it possible that Ukraine has shot down the military transport plane that crashed in Russia today. Kastehelmi works at Black Bird Group, which is an open source intelligence group.
He justifies his assessment by saying that if the Ukrainians knew the plane was carrying missiles, they had an incentive to destroy it.
Ukrainian Pravda reported that its sources in the Ukrainian Armed Forces had confirmed that it had shot down the plane. However, the newspaper corrected its reporting later and wrote that the defense forces were “examining what happened right now”.
According to Kastehelmi, there has also been speculation that the Russians themselves shot down the plane by accident.
The speculation is based on the fact that, according to local Telegram channels, there were air alerts and warnings about missiles in the area a little earlier in the morning. According to Kastehelmi, this is still not enough proof in itself. However, it could indicate that the air defense forces were active.
Kastehelmi points out that shooting down one’s own plane would mean very serious incompetence on the part of the air defense forces.
What was the plane carrying?
Russia and Ukraine have made completely different claims about what the plane was carrying. Russia claims that there were 65 prisoners of war on board the plane. Ukraine, on the other hand, has claimed that the plane was carrying missiles. According to Kastehelmi, Ilyushin’s Il-76 military transport plane can transport both equally.
According to Kastehelmi, based on the current information, it is impossible to judge whether there were prisoners of war or missiles on the plane.
– Both, of course, try to present the matter to themselves in the best possible light. Things would have to go wrong in some way, so that Ukraine would use all possible machines to drop it, where there are dozens of Ukrainians, Kastehelmi tells .
He points out that Russia has not presented any evidence, for example pictures, that would show that there were prisoners of war on the plane.
On the other hand, it would require accurate intelligence from Ukraine to know what is being transported on which plane. However, according to Kastehelmi, this is not impossible.
Will we ever find out for sure if there were prisoners of war on the plane?
– It depends on how strictly and clearly the Russians want to find out and prove this. It is often the case that the Russians present very wild claims in one direction or another, but do not provide evidence, says Kastehelmi.
According to him, the claim that the Ukrainians shot down the plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war fits “perfectly into the Russian narrative”.
– If something is somehow too good to be true, it often isn’t.