From most likely to least likely, my guesses on what really happened:
I lost track of all the good Russian planes they shot down.
How about the possibility that it was a way for Russia to execute a bunch of POWs, while still trying to reclaim their own? There are certainly some elements within the Russian military who wouldn’t blink at sacrificing a plane, for the sake of killing a bunch of Ukrainians.
Ukraine’s military intelligence said it had not been told to ensure safe airspace as on previous occasions.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said later it was “obvious that the Russians are playing with the lives of Ukrainian prisoners, with the feelings of their relatives and with the emotions of our society”.
Mr Zelensky - who has now cancelled a planned regional trip linked to his birthday on Thursday - stressed in a video address that Ukraine would be insisting on an international investigation.
The earlier comments by Ukraine’s military intelligence were seen as a tacit acknowledgement that it shot the plane down, although it stressed it had no reliable information about who was on board.
I think this is more likely than @TroutMan’s item #4 (Ukrainian missile took down a plane that WAS carrying POWs).
Ukraine’s take on it is that (unlike previous such flights) Russia failed to notify them that it had PoWs on it (presumably deliberately) so UKR shot at it as they would any military plane in a time of war.
Geolocation and on-ground witnesses say aircraft was departing. POWs (if any) would have been off the plane. Russian list of POW names is highly suspect. At least 26 had been previously released in other exchanges.
My thought was that the POWs, knowing what they were in for when they got to Russia, got loose and crashed the plane themselves. It would be a much better fate than a Russian prison.
Departing…from where to where?
This doesn’t explain the cloud of smoke in the plane’s flight path well before the crash, seen in this video at 0:21.
From the article, addressing Russia’s claims that Ukrainian POWs were onboard:
That might be a lie. A video from the crash site does not depict a lot of bodies. And a list of prisoners the Russians claimed were on the Il-76 reportedly includes names of Ukrainian POWs Russia already exchanged.
An interesting question is how often IL-76s fly into Belgorod?
Tactical transports routinely fly into harm’s way. There may be a couple dozen flights a week delivering materiel. And this one got unlucky.
Or msybe they never fly through there and this was a one-off. An unlucky one-off. Which would in turn raise the question of what one-off mission was it performing either on the way in or out or both?
I know I have no answers.
A whole lot of Russian oil is currently sitting in tankers off the coast of South Korea. Seems there is disagreement between Russia and the Indian Oil Corp about what currency should be used to pay for it.
3.2 million barrels. That’s a fair amount.
Enough to run the USA for about 3 hours.
It’s about $250 million dollars. enough for one oligarch’s yacht.
time’s are getting tough.
Does Russia not want to accept rubles??
Absolutely not. Russia can have as many rubles as they want. They need foreign currency to import things.
It’s different for the US, Europe, and some others (Japan, UK, etc.), because the dollar and euro can be used to buy things anywhere in the world, but the ruble, not so much.
Actually, Putin is insisting on payment for oil and gas in Rubles. cite.
I understand that this was only for “Unfriendly countries” as defined by Putin, and was for the purpose of propping up the currency in 2022. India (specifically the Indian Oil Corp) was not on this list, being one of the few “friendly” countries that Russia has left.
I’m not sure what the current currency negotiations are between Russia and India that have led to this situation with dozens of oil tankers parked in port.
The key quote from that article is
“If you’re invoiced in rubles, you’ve got to go out and buy rubles,”