Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he had summoned his military and intelligence chiefs to report on a plane crash over Russian territory that Moscow said killed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war (POW).
Russian officials accused Ukraine of shooting down the military aircraft over the Belgorod region on Wednesday, which they said was carrying 65 Ukrainians for a prisoner exchange and nine Russians.
Yesterday, Russian state news wires reported missile debris had been found at the site.
Photo: AP
Authorities in Kyiv initially limited themselves to appeals to avoid spreading unverified information, but in a statement late in the evening Zelenskiy called for an international investigation.
“The key word now is facts,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address, adding that they had to be established to the greatest extent possible given that the Il-76 crashed outside of Ukrainian territory.
In 2022, Russia accused Kyiv of using US-provided high-precision weapons to kill more than 40 Ukrainian POWs in a detention center in the occupied Donetsk region.
Ukraine disputed the claim, saying Russian forces destroyed the facility to conceal the torture of prisoners, accuse Ukraine of war crimes and disrupt the flow of Western weapons.
Russia is now seizing on the crash to sow domestic discontent in Ukraine and undermine Western will to continue giving military support, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in a report yesterday.
“It is obvious that the Russians are messing with the lives of Ukrainian captives, the feelings of their relatives, and the emotions of our society,” Zelenskiy said.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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