Columnist Yulia Latynina suggests that there were two military transport planes used today in the failed POW swap. Ukraine shot one down, and the other escaped, she says. She’s skeptical that Moscow staged the flights to trick Ukraine into attacking.

https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/01/24/v-shage-ot-osvobozhdeniia

Russia is desperate to take out Ukraine’s Patriot missile batteries, she says, arguing that Russia would have attacked those weapons if it knew they were stationed so close to Belgorod.

At the same time, Latynina defends the Ukrainian attack on the transport plane, arguing that Belgorod airspace is part of the combat zone and that the plane was a legitimate target (this ain’t MH17), but she adds that Russia isn’t obligated to inform Kyiv about its military transport routes over Russian airspace.

She says that a single Il-76 plane can carry 250 people and suggests that the POW group (Russia was supposed to swap 192 men today) was split between two planes to accommodate a cargo of S-300 missiles, which some news outlets previously reported.

@kevinrothrock not that it's surprising, but wouldn't carrying both weapons and POWs together be a Geneva Convention violation ?