Ukraine says Russia refuses to turn over the bodies of military plane crash victims

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KYIV, Ukraine — Russia has refused Ukrainian requests to hand over the bodies of scores of prisoners of war whom the Kremlin claims were killed in the downing of a Russian military transport plane by Kyiv's forces, a Ukrainian intelligence official said.

Andrii Yusov, the spokesman for Ukraine's military intelligence said in televised remarks late Thursday that Kyiv has urged Moscow to hand over the bodies of those who died in the Jan. 24 crash, but it has refused to do so. He reaffirmed Ukraine's call for an international probe into the crash that would determine whether the cargo plane carried weapons or passengers along with the crew.

Russia accused Ukraine of killing its own men, while Kyiv dismisses Moscow's assertions as "rampant Russian propaganda."

Kyiv has neither confirmed nor denied that its forces shot the plane down, and Russia's claim the crash killed Ukrainian POWs couldn't be independently verified. Ukrainian officials emphasized that Moscow didn't ask for any specific stretch of airspace to be kept safe for a certain length of time, as it has for past POW exchanges.

Some Western intelligence assessments have suggested the plane was shot down by a missile from Ukraine, although they could not confirm the presence of POWs on board.

A French military official told The Associated Press that the country's military concluded that Ukrainian forces used a battery of Patriot surface-to-air missiles to shoot down the Il-76, firing from about 50 kilometres (about 30 miles) away.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to divulge the intelligence findings, said the Ukrainian battery apparently managed to stay hidden while getting closer to the target and then switched on its radar "just long enough to hit them."

Another Western official also said the plane was downed by "a missile strike rather than any kind of mechanical failure," and it's almost certain the missile was fired from Ukrainian territory. The official said "it's not yet clear" whether it was carrying Ukrainian POWs.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the state RIA Novosti news agency on Friday that the Kremlin hadn't received a Ukrainian request to hand over the bodies. Asked if Russia would be willing to hand them over, he later told reporters that the official investigation into the incident was continuing and it would be up to Russian law enforcement agencies to consider such a request.

President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia wouldn't only welcome but would "insist" on an international inquiry into the plane's downing that he described as a "crime" by Ukraine.

Yusov, the Ukrainian intelligence spokesperson, said some of the Ukrainian POWs who were meant to be part of an exchange on the day of the crash were swapped Wednesday when about 200 Ukrainian prisoners returned home.

Russia's Investigative Committee, the main state criminal investigation agency, said Thursday its probe of the crash found that the Il-76 was brought down by one of the U.S.-made Patriot air defence systems, which Western allies -- namely the U.S., Germany and the Netherlands -- have supplied to Ukraine. The U.S. has provided the Patriots with the understanding that they not be used outside of Ukraine

Russian officials claimed there were 74 people on board, including 65 Ukrainian POWs, six crew members and three Russian servicemen. All were reported killed when the plane hit the ground and exploded in a giant fireball in the Belgorod region near Ukraine.

The Investigative Committee said investigators have found over 670 body fragments and identified all of the crash victims.

The committee said it also has recovered 116 pieces of two missiles that were fired from a Patriot system from near the village of Lyptsi in Ukraine's Kharkiv region. It showed a video that purported to show some missile fragments lying in the snow with visible markings.

Ukraine previously claimed credit for a May 2023 cross-border strike with Patriot missiles.

Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said in an interview in November the Ukrainian military used Patriots to down two Russian warplanes and three helicopters over Russia's Bryansk region in May in what he called a "brilliant" operation.

With the 1,500-kilometre (930-mile) front line remaining largely static as the war approaches the two-year mark, Russia has continued to pummel Ukraine with long-range strikes.

Meeting with arms industry workers on Friday in the Russian city of Tula, Putin described the fight in Ukraine as a battle for Russia's survival and that the vast majority of his countrymen support his course.

"If the public hadn't felt that way, nothing would have happened," he said. "We are doing what people expect us to do."

He said sending troops into Ukraine was necessary to protect Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine and stop what he described as attempts by Washington and its NATO allies to encroach on Moscow's vital security interests. Ukraine and its Western allies have denounced it as an unprovoked act of aggression.

In Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's hometown, a drone attack damaged an energy infrastructure facility, leaving 100,000 people without electricity and 113 coal miners stranded underground for a time, according to Mayor Oleksandr Vilkul. All the miners were brought to safety after power was partially restored, he said.

Another Russian strike Thursday killed two French aid workers in the town of Beryslav in the southern Kherson region, Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said. French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the attack as "cowardly and outrageous."

Russian forces also carried out an airstrike Friday on the city of Kherson that left at least two people wounded, according to local officials. A three-story residential building was partially destroyed and many others were damaged.

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John Leicester in Paris and Jill Lawless in London contributed.