President Vladimir Putin announced Wednesday that Russian investigators had determined that Ukraine used a US-made Patriot missile system to bring down an Ilyushin Il-76 transport plane full of Ukrainian prisoners of war on January 24.
The Russian Investigative Committee has identified missile fragments found near the Il-76 crash site in Belgorod region.
"Based on the conclusion of examinations carried out during the investigation, the fragments seized from the scene of the incident, based on their design features, geometric characteristics and available markings, are structural elements of the MIM-104A anti-aircraft guided missile of the US Patriot complex, developed by the Raytheon and Hughes corporations, and produced by Raytheon," the Investigative Committee said in a summary of findings released Thursday.
"It has been established that on January 24, 2024, a Russian Aerospace Force Il-76 military transport aircraft was attacked using an anti-aircraft missile system firing two missiles operated by personnel from the Ukrainian Armed Forces from the settlement of Liptsy in Kharkov region, Ukraine," investigators said.
In the course of the investigation at the scene of the incident, in an area about 1.8 km northeast and 4.8 km southeast of the presumed attack site, 116 fragments of two missiles with English-language inscriptions were found. Ion mobility spectrometry, gas chromatography, and high-performance liquid chromatography analyses were used to find traces of RDX (hexogen) with impurities of up to 10 percent, as well as HMX (octogen) on the fragments. Such chemical compounds are "typical for foreign-made explosives," according to investigators.
English-language markings included a series of coded part numbers, "Raytheon," and text marked "CONFIDENTIAL classified by PATRIOT SECURITY CLASSIFICATION GUIDE DATED: 9/22/83 ADDENDA DATED 11/28/83 8/8/84 CONTRACT NO/DAAH01-86C-A018."
All Passengers and Crew Aboard Doomed Plane Killed
The Investigative Committee was also able to confirm Thursday that all 74 people onboard the downed Il-76 plane were killed, identifying the victims after recovering over 670 bodies and body parts, as well as partially preserved identification documents. The committee said it had access to the 'genetic profiles' of all of the Ukrainian PoWs onboard to help make the determination that they had been killed.
The dead included six Russian crew members, three Russian military police officers and 65 Ukrainian military personnel.
US Complicit in Il-76 Downing, Moscow Says
Commenting on the findings, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the Biden administration of turning ordinary American citizens into accomplices of the Kiev regime in the Il-76's downing.
"Americans should know where their money is going. Biden and his team have made Americans complicit in a bloody tragedy," Zakharova wrote in a social media post.
Separately on Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov complained that Washington's European allies don't seem all that interested in President Putin's proposal for an international investigation into the Il-76 shootdown.
"Yesterday, the president openly, publicly stated that we are ready for an international investigation into this horrific act and are interested in it. Now we are already hearing European voices asking us to give them some documents - that they won't consider anything without documents," Peskov said. "None of them will be interested in conducting an investigation to end up accidentally finding themselves in it. The position of the collective West, which is a direct participant in this armed conflict, is also obvious," he said.
On the one week anniversary of the January 24 incident, the Russian president admitted that he still doesn't fully "understand" why Ukraine decided to shoot down a Russian plane full of Ukrainian PoWs on its way to a prisoner exchange.
"You asked why they did it. I don't know. I don't understand it," Putin said, suggesting it may have been done to provoke Russia into retaliatory attacks on civilian targets inside Ukraine, or to "divert the attention of their own population and sponsors from the failures of the so-called counteroffensive."
Ukrainian media and officials made a series of contradictory statements regarding the incident, initially reporting that a Russian plane had been shot down by Ukrainian air defenses, then scrubbing this information. Ukraine's military intelligence confirmed that a prisoner exchange was scheduled for January 24 and subsequently canceled.
Ukraine's General Staff claimed the plane was carrying weapons and that the Ukrainian military would "continue to take measures to destroy the missile delivery means" used by Russia "including in the Belgorod-Kharkov direction."
President Zelensky called for an international investigation and accused Moscow of "playing with the lives" of Ukrainian PoWs. A week on, as evidence of Kiev's culpability mounts, Ukrainian and Western officials and media have largely gone silent.
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