Il-76 Provocation ‘Setting Zelensky Up for Fall at Time of US’s Choosing’

More than a day has passed since Wednesday morning’s downing of a Russian Il-76 transport plane full of Ukrainian PoWs near the Ukrainian border, with Kiev, Washington and Brussels silent following revelations by Russia’s Defense Ministry that the plane was struck by Ukrainian missiles. Sputnik asked Russian and Western observers what it all means.

In a televised address to the nation Wednesday night, President Zelensky said Ukrainian military intelligence would seek to “clarify the fates” of PoWs presumed lost in the Il-76 crash, accusing Russia of "playing with the[ir] lives" and calling for an “international investigation” into the incident.

Earlier in the day, Ukraine’s General Staff said it would “continue to take measures to destroy the missile delivery means” used by Russia, “including in the Belgorod-Kharkov direction,” and neither commented on nor denied Ukrainian involvement in the Il-76’s downing.

Hours before that, a Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman confirmed to US media that a prisoner swap had been scheduled for Wednesday, indicating that Kiev had direct knowledge of the Russian aircraft’s route and mission.

In Washington, officials seemed eager to distance themselves from the incident, with White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby saying the US was “doing the best we can” to “get more clarity and more information,” and President Biden not making any statements at all on the matter.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Thursday that Russia would be prepared for an international probe proposed by Zelensky, “if he means an international investigation into the criminal actions of the Kiev regime,” which “is definitely needed.”

“The exchange of prisoners is a process that takes place in complete silence. The fact that the Ukrainians killed their PoWs, their citizens, who should have been at home literally in a day, this, of course, is a completely monstrous act. It’s beyond comprehension,” Peskov said.

Russian emergency services personnel on the ground confirmed Thursday that they found what appeared to be fragments of an anti-aircraft guided missile at the crash site, along with wreckage punctured by hundreds of entrance holes from the missile’s striking elements.

Silence Speaks Volumes

Ukraine’s failure to offer a coherent explanation for the plane’s destruction, and failure to provide a plausible excuse for attacking the Russian plane, signals the “difficult” situation facing Kiev leaders as it becomes increasingly obvious that the aircraft was targeted by Ukraine’s air defenses, Tiberio Graziani, chairman of Vision & Global Trends, a Rome-based international affairs think tank, told Sputnik.

“The problem is very delicate. Evidently there is an intelligence problem that Kiev is unable to fill. It is foreseeable that heads will probably roll in the armed forces’ entourage,” Graziani said, implying that the attack on the plane may have been carried out by rogue or sloppy elements inside the military.

“Objectively, when cases like this occur it is almost a given that confidentiality is maintained, waiting to initiate a valid communication strategy in order to contain the damage,” the observer said, referencing the series of contradictory statements coming out of Kiev implicating Ukraine over the past 24 hours.

“The case in particular puts Zelensky in difficulty. This case could be an element that internal opponents could [use] against the current leadership,” Graziani suggested.

Russian military analyst Alexei Leonkov agreed, saying Ukraine’s ‘Western partners’ may have been involved in the attack in an attempt to break off one of the last communication links between Kiev and Moscow in the form of prisoner exchanges.

“I believe this was an operation prepared ahead of time. Because the Ukrainian air defense system fired without turning on its radar, that is, fired using external target designation means. Such means are possessed by the Americans and the British, who are now factually managing the conflict in Ukraine,” Leonkov told Sputnik.

Pointing to the role played by now former Prime Minister Boris Johnson in sabotaging Russia-Ukraine peace talks in April 2022, and newly picked Foreign Secretary David Cameron’s recent talk of London being “prepared to support” Ukraine through the year 2026, Leonkov suggested that the British may be deliberately “burning all the bridges so that Ukraine has no chance of conducting any negotiations” with Moscow.

“Zelensky will survive this, but it is setting him up for a fall at any time the USA chooses,” international relations and Russian affairs analyst Dr. Gilbert Doctorow said, agreeing that the shootdown undermines Zelensky’s position.

“They are tight-lipped because they are waiting for Russia to announce exactly what type of ground-to-air missiles they fired to bring down the plane. If it is, as France Presse reports, Patriot missiles, then the situation will be very bad for Kiev, because of these missiles would indicate advance planning under orders from the top military command to remove such Patriot batteries from Kiev to Kharkov for the purpose of shooting this very plane carrying PoWs. Even if the missiles were S-300s or something similar, the question arises about the level of command that ordered the firing,” Doctorow told Sputnik.

“If we look at previous incidents that occurred in the context of the special military operation, until now Zelensky has not dealt with a similar case,” Dr. Marco Marsili, an associate fellow with the Centre for Strategic Research and Analysis, a UK-based think tank, said.

“If Kiev is lying about the downing of the Russian aircraft, it means that the Ukrainian leadership fears to face the public opinion, [which is] tired of this conflict, that could start protesting in the streets and, eventually, overthrow the government,” Marsili stressed, pointing to Kiev’s rich recent history of governments toppled by street protests.

Prisoner Exchanges Face Uncertain Future

In his remarks Thursday, Peskov confirmed that the IL-76 shootdown undermines the potential for further prisoner exchanges.

“How this will affect the prospects for continuing this process no one can say. But I will repeat once again that this process must take place in absolute silence,” he said.

With ties between Moscow and Kiev hitting a new low, Leonkov expressed concerns that the shootdown may doom Russian PoWs to even more grueling conditions in captivity.

“As far as Ukrainian prisoners of war are concerned, nothing bad will happen to them, because they are being kept in humane conditions and treated humanely. It will be worse for our prisoners of war, whom we know are being mistreated and tortured. The British will probably use this for their own purposes. In other words, the situation has worsened dramatically,” he emphasized.

Parallels to MH-17

Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst at the Office of the US Secretary of Defense, drew a parallel between the downed Il-76 and the summer 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over the Donbass, pointing out to Sputnik on Wednesday that in spite of evidence of Ukraine’s responsibility, Kiev and the West continue to blame Russia even a decade later.

“The parallels are clear,” Dr. Doctorow said. “The Kiev regime has been cynically staging one atrocity after another with no concern for the loss of innocent lives.”

“They are trying to hide the fact that their neo-Nazi regime is extremely cruel and inhumane. They intentionally shoot their own soldiers in the back to prevent desertion. They intentionally bomb holding centers where their PoWs are lodged inside Russia as happened about a year ago. But that only confirms that the same criminals of the Kiev regime were responsible for the Bucha massacre which they used to end peace talks with Russia. And these same people were responsible for the carnage of civilians and police during the demonstrations on Maidan in 2014. They surely were also behind the shoot down of MH17 which was intended to achieve the full EU application of America's 'sanctions from hell' against Russia,” the international affairs observer said.

Leonkov agreed. “Both then and now, these were planned special operations. But back then, the Ukrainian side was aware of the events that took place, and therefore, Russia could reliably reconstruct events as they took place. This time, I believe the British deliberately deceived the Ukrainian side,” the observer said.

For his part, Dr. Marco Marsili stressed that if an investigation into the Il-76 incident were to proceed, it would have to be completely different from the one conducted in the case of the Mh17, which seemed “designed to come to conclusions already drafted before analyzing the case.”

“Justice, to be such, must be neutral and impartial and, in this case, international and not bilateral or multilateral,” and involve Russia, Ukraine and international experts, Marsili said.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 went down in the eastern Donetsk People’s Republic on July 17, 2014 while on route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, with the crash killing all 298 people onboard. Kiev and its Western partners immediately accused Russia and Donbass militias of shooting the passenger airliner down, but did not invite Moscow to take part in the investigation. Russian defense concern Almaz-Antei conducted its own forensic investigation, concluding that the plane was downed by a Soviet-made Ukrainian Buk missile launched from an area controlled by the Ukrainian military.