I wouldn’t call it propaganda or even news - it’s just theories at this stage.
What we can speculate about is motive to deceive. Russia has been incurring some notable losses from Ukrainian anti-air defences recently, so there would be a motive from the Russian side to portray those anti-air defences as either ineffective or untrustworthy so as to try and sway public opinion about its use.
Claiming that POWs were onboard the plane aligns with that motive but it also raises questions such as:
The plane was reportedly shot down after taking off from Belgorod, so if it was carrying POWs away from Belgorod, what was the intended destination? It doesn’t seem logical that Russia would fly from Belgorod into Ukraine (unless they were stupid or taking the risk).
Why not transport POWs to Ukraine by road or rail, given that Kharkiv is only a 90 min drive away?
The plane was quite clearly not taking off from Belgorod. Like I said, Sushko is entirely unreliable and does zero vetting of his “sources.” His translations are notoriously poor.
The flight was entering Belgorod, which follows typical Russian POW exchange procedure according to the NYT. An IL-76 is used to deliver POWs to a nearby city, and they are then shuttled by bus to the border.
But also, if Ukrainian radars can’t tell the difference between a fucking IL-76 and a Su-34 or cruise missile, what the fuck man. Their radar signature isn’t even in the same order of magnitude.
I wouldn’t call it propaganda or even news - it’s just theories at this stage.
What we can speculate about is motive to deceive. Russia has been incurring some notable losses from Ukrainian anti-air defences recently, so there would be a motive from the Russian side to portray those anti-air defences as either ineffective or untrustworthy so as to try and sway public opinion about its use.
Claiming that POWs were onboard the plane aligns with that motive but it also raises questions such as:
The plane was quite clearly not taking off from Belgorod. Like I said, Sushko is entirely unreliable and does zero vetting of his “sources.” His translations are notoriously poor.
The flight was entering Belgorod, which follows typical Russian POW exchange procedure according to the NYT. An IL-76 is used to deliver POWs to a nearby city, and they are then shuttled by bus to the border.
But also, if Ukrainian radars can’t tell the difference between a fucking IL-76 and a Su-34 or cruise missile, what the fuck man. Their radar signature isn’t even in the same order of magnitude.