A military plane carrying 74 people, including 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war, crashed on Wednesday in the Belgorode region near the Russian-Ukraine border, the Associated Press reported.
Russia said that all those on board were killed, according to AFP.
Russian defence officials accused Ukraine of shooting down the plane. Ukrainian officials have not yet commented on the reasons for the crash.
Apart from the prisoners of war, the aircraft also had on board six crew members and three other passengers.
The prisoners of war were reportedly being transported to the border region for a prisoner exchange.
Visuals of the crash on social media showed a ball of fire emerging from the ground as the plane fell from the sky in a snowy area.
Firefighters, ambulances and police officials rushed to the site of the crash.
Ukrainian rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, one of the officials in charge of prisoner exchanges, said his office was looking into the reasons for the crash.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, claiming that it was a special military operation necessary to prevent Kyiv from being used as a platform for Western aggression. However, Kyiv and its Western allies have dismissed these arguments as baseless pretext for a war.
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