Ukrainian intelligence commented on the disruption of the exchange of prisoners of war

The Russian side has cited the downing of an IL-76 aircraft allegedly carrying Ukrainian prisoners as a reason for cancelling the exchange.

This was reported by the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry.

The GUR said there was no reliable information about the aircraft passengers yet.

At the moment, Ukraine does not have reliable and exhaustive information about who was on board the aircraft and in what quantity. For its part, Ukraine has fulfilled all agreements on the proper preparation of the exchange," the Defence Ministry's GSD said.

The Russian prisoners were delivered in time for the exchange to the agreed place where they were safe. The safety of the Ukrainian defenders was Russia's responsibility, which was not informed about the need to secure the airspace near the city of Belgorod during a certain period of time - in the past, it was done.

Ukraine was not informed about the number of vehicles, routes and forms of delivery of the captives. It is known that the delivery of captives takes place both by air, railway and road transport," the report said.

The GUR noted that this may indicate deliberate actions of Russia to endanger the life and safety of the captives. The landing of a transport plane in a 30-kilometre combat zone should be discussed by both sides in order not to endanger the entire exchange process.

Based on this, we may be talking about planned and deliberate actions of Russia in order to destabilise the situation in Ukraine and weaken the international support for our state," the GSD concluded.

We shall remind you that on 24 December, a Russian military transport plane, Il-76, crashed in the Belgorod region of Russia. After that, the Russian Defence Ministry said that there were 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war on board who were being taken for exchange.