Russia says France rejects urgent UN Security Council meeting on plane crash with Ukrainian war prisoners

By Elena Teslova

MOSCOW (AA) - France rejected Russia's request to convene a UN Security Council meeting on Thursday to discuss the crash of a Russian military plane transporting Ukrainian war prisoners for a swap, the Russian mission to the UN said on Thursday.

France chose the path of “abusing its powers as chairman of the Security Council in January and refuses to meet our demand for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council over the terrorist attack by the Kyiv regime," Dmitry Polyansky, Russia's deputy ambassador to the UN, wrote on Telegram.

According to him, France is trying "to buy time" for Ukraine "to come up with at least some kind of plausible explanation” for the deadly crash.

Russia’s Defense Ministry on Wednesday accused Ukraine of shooting down an Il-76 military plane carrying captured Ukrainian servicemen for a prisoner exchange.

On board there were 65 captured Ukrainian soldiers, six crew members, and three escorts. The crew and all the passengers on the plane were killed, it said, calling what happened "a terrorist attack" mounted in order to accuse Russia of killing Ukrainian servicemen.

Ukrainian authorities were "well aware of the planned transportation" in advance, the ministry stressed.