Russian plane, a list of passengers appears: the names that arouse suspicion

There is a propaganda and information war between Russia and Ukraine over the Russian Il-76 plane, which crashed on Wednesday in the Belgorod region. For Kiev there were weapons on board, for Moscow dozens of prisoners of war returning home after an exchange. “Preliminary decoding of the black boxes is underway to prepare a technical conclusion” about the Russian plane, a spokesman for the Russian emergency services told Ria Novosti. Experts from a research institute began work on extracting information from the black boxes, the source added, and the onboard voice recorder and a device for recording flight parameters were delivered in the morning for examination. However, Russian military intelligence refused to allow an international commission to investigate the accident, as requested by Ukrainian intelligence.

Infanto began circulating an alleged passenger list for the flight, 65 names belonging to Ukrainian prisoners. The images of the two sheets written in Cyrillic are re-released by several pro-Russian reports that emphasize that the list also includes soldiers from the Azov battalion. But other Ukrainian users claim that it would be a fake list or related to another flight, as it contains many names of soldiers who have already been changed and who have been in Ukraine for some time. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on reports of the alleged passenger list. “No, I don’t know anything about that,” said the Kremlin spokesman, “I don’t even know if these lists have been officially published anywhere.”