Russia has signaled that it will hand over the bodies of Ukrainian prisoners of war who allegedly died aboard a Russian Il-76 plane in a Jan. 24 crash.
Russian Human Rights Ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova told “RIA. News” that she is in contact with Ukrainian representatives and that “the Ukrainian side was interested in the possibility of transferring the bodies.”
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“The bodies can be transferred under existing procedures,” Moskaleva said.
Andriy Yusov, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry's Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) spokesman, told Kyiv Post that “work in this direction is underway.”
“Ukraine has repeatedly appealed to the aggressor state regarding the bodies of the dead, allegedly Ukrainian prisoners of war, on board the Il-76,” Yusov told Kyiv Post.
The Russian ombudsman said that she is discussing this issue with Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets, to whom she said she had “given all the answers to questions about the incident.”
“Regarding the bodies, I immediately informed (the Ukrainian side) that we have confirmation and all the DNA, which, according to the expert opinion, allows us to make identifications,” Moskaleva said.
The Russian Il-76 aircraft crashed in the western Belgorod region of Russia on Jan. 24, hitting the ground in a giant fireball, presumably killing everyone on board.
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The Russian Ministry of Defense stated that the plane was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war captured during the full-scale invasion, three escorts, and six crew members.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine then stated that it would “continue to destroy the means of delivery and control over the airspace to destroy the terrorist threat, including on the Belgorod-Kharkiv direction.”
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Ukrainian forces deployed in the Kharkiv region fired two missiles at the Russian transport plane.
Russia has not yet provided evidence for these claims.
“If it happened as Russia claims, why did Russia hide the bodies for several days and continue to hide them? It was supposed to show this to the whole world: ‘Look, Ukrainians are murderers.’ But there are no corpses, there is nothing,” Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the HUR, said on television in late January.
Lubinets said that Moscow “is once again starting to speculate on the downing of IL-76. But so far, Russia has not handed over official lists, confirmed the facts, or granted international organizations access to the crash site,” he said.
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