Russian Military Analyst Claims UK Was Behind Il-76 Plane Crash

A prominent Russian military analyst accused the United Kingdom of being behind the Wednesday crash of a Russian military transport plane near the Russia-Ukraine border.

"I think that the plane that was shot down. It was a well-planned, orchestrated act which was prepared by the British," Alexei Leonkov, a pundit who frequently speaks on military matters, said—without offering any evidence—during a recent broadcast on the Kremlin-controlled television channel Russia-1.

Moscow has accused Ukraine of shooting down the aircraft, an Ilyushin Il-76, in Russia's Belgorod region. Sixty-five Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) held by Russia who were set for inclusion in a prisoner swap were among those killed in the crash, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Ukraine, however, has denied involvement in the strike and questioned if POWs were aboard the Il-76.

BBC Monitoring reporter Francis Scarr on Thursday shared a translated video on X, formerly Twitter, of Leonkov making the claims about British involvement.

Newsweek reached out to the ministries of defense for the United Kingdom and Russia via email on Thursday night for comment.

The clip begins with Leonkov discussing a recent television appearance by Tobias Ellwood, former U.K. defense secretary, who agreed with his country's army chief that conscription could be a possibility in Britain due to external threats.

"Such belligerent speeches from Great Britain are linked to the fact that they have spearheaded NATO's European front against Russia," Leonkov said during a group discussion with host Olga Skabeyeva, according to Scarr's translation.

He continued: "That's to say, they're behaving like commanders. They're telling everyone else where to go, telling Germany to give Ukraine missiles and so on."

Leonkov then addressed the Il-76 crash, saying "[T]he Ukrainians couldn't have done it on their own."

"Britain was acting on several fronts, so to speak, at once. First, they were trying to sever the last thing somehow connecting us to Ukraine," he said. "That's to say, the exchange of prisoners is the only thread connecting us to Ukraine, where we're still able to talk somehow and swap prisoners of war."

Leonkov accused the U.K. of also "putting pressure on the European partners who aren't agreeing with them," such as Germany, who has been reluctant to provide Ukraine with Taurus missiles.

"And so the British set up the disaster, let's call it, by using one of the systems in Ukraine's arsenal, which was supplied from NATO countries," Leonkov said.