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Ukrainian troops have shot down a Russian military plane carrying Ukrainian soldiers in order to derail an upcoming prisoner swap, Moscow told the UN Security Council on Thursday.

The Il-76 cargo aircraft crashed in Russia’s border region of Belgorod on Wednesday morning, killing everyone on board. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the plane was transporting 65 Ukrainian POWs slated for exchange that was to take place later that day.

”All currently available data points to a deliberate, premeditated crime,” Russian deputy envoy to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, said. “The Ukrainian leadership was well aware about the route and means by which [the Ukrainian] soldiers would have been transported to the agreed exchange point.”

”It was not the first such operation. However, for some inexplicable reason, the regime in Kiev had decided this time to sabotage [the swap] in the most barbaric way,” the diplomat said. 

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https://www.rt.com/russia/591296-lavrov-un-plane-pows/

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