The Russian Piece of Work That is Vladimir Putin

"[Ukraine would push for an international investigation of what happened]."

"It is necessary to establish all the facts, as much as possible, considering that the plane crash occurred on Russian territory — beyond our control."

"It's obvious Russians are playing with lives of Ukrainian POWs, with feelings of their relatives and emotions of our society." 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Russia escalating attacks on Ukraine  Still from video

Vladimir Putin seems to enjoy his little jokes, turning the screw, twisting the blade and watching the results. This is the man who decided to launch a full-scale war on a neighbour, preferring to call it a "special military operation", and enacting a new law that would make it a criminal offence to name it a war. This is the man who bare-facedly expressed emotional anguish over the humanitarian crisis that Palestinians are facing in Gaza, sternly admonishing Israel to a ceasefire to spare Palestinians from more deaths and injuries.

 

It might not have occurred to him to admonish Hamas for perpetrating a mass atrocity in Israel on October 7, nor to recommend that the terrorist group surrender the hostages taken from Israel into Gaza, much less they stop bombarding Israel with rockets at the expense of Palestinians in Gaza whom Hamas leaders proudly claim are willingly offering themselves as martyrs to enable Hamas to achieve its goal of destroying Israel and slaughtering Jews. It strikes, after all, a little too close to home.

This is the man who shells Ukrainian towns and villages, hospitals and schools under the pretext of bombing military sites which don't exist there. The man responsible for levelling towns and cities to rubble, shooting drones and rockets at apartment blocks and killing residents who evidently don't deserve the empathy and concern that Palestinians do in the Russian Czar's estimation. And just as Hamas revels in the growing body count of Palestinians during the Israel Defense Forces offensive against Hamas to work in their public relations favour, Putin too likes to twist reality to his advantage.

On Wednesday a Russian military transport plane was shot out of the sky and crashed in a border region close to Ukraine. Moscow took the occasion to accuse Kyiv of having shot it down, and thus was responsible for the death of all 74 people aboard the I1-75 transport plane. A video of the crash from the Belgorod border region of Russia showed a plane falling out of the sky onto a snowy, rural landscape followed by a massive ball of fire as it hit the ground.

Aboard were 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war meant to be traded back to Ukraine in exchange for Russian prisoners held by Ukraine, according to Russian media. The Russian Defense Ministry stated that the plane had been carrying 65 prisoners of war, a crew of six and three Russian servicemen. According to the ministry, Russian radar registered the launch of two missiles from the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, bordering Belgorod.

Following the event the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine made no acknowledgement of the crash, but stated that Ukraine targets Russian military transport planes meant to deliver missiles, particularly adjacent the border between the two countries. In May of 2023 Russia lost two warplanes and two helicopters in its own airspace in a single day. Initially, as is their habit, Kyiv officials denied involvement, later stating Patriot missiles were used to hit the aircraft.

Exchanges between Ukraine and Russia including airstrikes with missiles and drones have been a focus of the fighting around the Kharkiv and Belgorod regions. Russian state news agency Tass reported that first responders rushed to the crash site in the Korochansky district of Belgorod. According to the Moscow Defense Ministry, a military commission was dispatched to the scene of the crash.

The Ukrainian prisoners were being flown to the region for a prisoner exchange, stated the Russian military, when the plane was shot down at 11:15 a.m. Designed to carry up to 225 troops, cargo, military equipment and weapons the Il-76 was charged on this occasion with delivering the prisoners of war. Ukraine bitterly charged Russia with failing to advise them beforehand of the purpose of the flight and while the Ukrainian military intelligence confirmed a prisoner exchange was due to take place, no information had been conveyed on who was on the crashed Russian plane.

Somewhat like Hamas informing Israel that the  hostages they had taken out of Israel were dying as a result of Israel bombing Gaza's infamous tunnel system, caught in the collapse and the destruction of the tunnels or adjacent buildings with tunnel entrances from which Hamas exits to launch missiles in the midst of crowded  urban centres, accustomed to using the civilian population as collateral damage shields and their deaths as public relations coups.

A video, which Reuters obtained and matched to satellite imagery of the area, shows a Russian transport plane crashing by the Ukrainian border. The Russian state news agency said the plane was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war, a claim Ukraine hasn't confirmed.