DW: The IL-76 did not fly to the border with Ukraine, but from it and could transport weapons

The Il-76 that crashed in the Belgorod region, analysts say, could have been carrying weapons. Journalists report nuances and inconsistencies.

How tells DW, there are inconsistencies in the list of Ukrainian prisoners on board the crashed plane published by Margarita Simonyan. Earlier, the editor-in-chief of the Russian resource Russia Today published in the Telegram channel a list of names and dates of birth of 65 people who, according to her, were Ukrainian prisoners of war flying on the crashed plane. After this publication, Ukrainian journalists found out that some Ukrainians from list Simonyan had already been traded earlier. UNIAN agency writes:

“The names of 17 people from this list match the names from the list of prisoners who were already exchanged on January 3.”

The Mediazona and Important Stories publications, as well as the Ukrainian OSINT analyst Skrinka Pandori (Pandora’s Box), claim that the Russian Il-76 military transport aircraft was flying away from the border with Ukraine, and not towards it. Journalists analyzed the footage of the plane crash and came to the conclusion that the video was filmed from the center of the village of Yablonovo in a direction to the north.

As Skrinki Pandori reports, the Il-76 had tail number RA-78830 and before the crash flew through Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Red Sea and Iran. Near Syria, he disappeared from radar, and then reappeared in Belgorod:

“Everything indicates that he brought weapons from the East. So far there is no sign that there could be prisoners there.”

Edition “Layout” found outthat the Il-76 number RA-78830, according to Flightradar data, last signaled near Cyprus at 10.10 Moscow time, while the crash occurred at 11.15 Moscow time:

“The aircraft simply would not have had time to cover the distance from Cyprus to the Belgorod region in just over an hour. In addition, apparently, RA-78830 was preparing to land in Syria – in the last 15 minutes of signal transmission, it dropped its altitude from 32 thousand feet to 20.3 thousand.”

Meanwhile, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine issued the first statement after the Il-76 crash. The document posted on Facebook states:

“The Ukrainian army will continue to destroy delivery vehicles and airspace control to eliminate the terrorist threat, including in the Belgorod-Kharkov direction.”

The statement emphasizes that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are taking all measures to protect the country, and the Russians are continuing their strategy of terror amid their inability to achieve any results on the battlefield. Over the last week alone, the Russian Armed Forces launched 19 missile attacks on the Kharkov region, while “the intensity of the attacks is directly related to the increase in the number of military transport aircraft that have recently been sent to the Belgorod airfield,” it is further noted. At the same time, the statement of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine does not say anything about the crash of the Il-76 plane.

Telegram channel “Briefing”, with reference to its own anonymous source, reportsthat a Russian working negotiation group was flying on the Il-76. “Among the dead were Abramovich’s assistant and negotiators from Ramzan Kadyrov, as well as officers from the Ministry of Defense. This is a disaster. People who ensured the exchange of prisoners of war over the past year were killed.”

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