MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia said on Friday it had recovered Ukrainian identity documents and tattooed body parts from the site where a Russian military plane that Moscow says was carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war crashed two days earlier near the Ukrainian border.
Moscow accuses Kyiv of downing the Ilyushin Il-76 plane in Russia’s Belgorod region, killing 74 people on board, including 65 captured Ukrainian soldiers en route to be swapped for Russian PoWs.
Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied that its forces downed the plane and said there is no proof of who was on board. It has challenged details of Moscow’s account and called for an international investigation.
Russia’s state Investigative Committee said body parts were being collected and removed for genetic testing, and some of them bore distinctive tattoos like those worn by captured Ukrainians that Russia had interrogated.
It said the evidence collected also included “documents of Ukrainian servicemen who died in the disaster, confirming their identities, as well as accompanying documents from the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia”.
Russia has sole access to the crash site. Reuters could not independently verify its account of what happened and what evidence had been recovered. On Thursday the Investigative Committee said preliminary findings showed the plane was struck by a surface-to-air missile fired from Ukraine.
Ukraine has rejected a Russian assertion that it was forewarned that a plane carrying Ukrainian POWs would be flying over Belgorod region at that time.
It has also pointed to discrepancies on a purported list of the names of the 65 Ukrainians that was published by Russian media, saying some of these were soldiers who had already returned in a previous swap.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he was not aware any official list had been published. He told reporters he had no information on what would happen to the body remains and whether they would be handed to Ukraine.
Asked if Russia would provide the U.N. Security Council and other international organisations with evidence that Ukraine shot down the plane, Peskov said: “I have nothing to add yet. Investigators are working, decisions will be made after the investigators receive all the necessary information.”
Russia state media said the black boxes from the plane had been delivered to a special defence ministry laboratory in Moscow and investigators were already working on them.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Alison Williams)
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