KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia has rejected Ukrainian requests to hand over the bodies of scores of prisoners of war who the Kremlin says were killed when a Russian military transport plane was shot down by Kiev forces, a Ukrainian intelligence official said.

Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Andrii Yusov, in a televised address late Thursday, reiterated Kiev’s call for an international investigation into the Jan. 24 crash in Russia to determine whether the Il-76 transport was carrying weapons or passengers along with the crew.

Russia accused Ukraine of killing its own men, while Kiev dismissed Moscow’s claims as “rampant Russian propaganda.”

Kiev has neither confirmed nor denied that its forces shot down the plane, and Russia’s claim that the crash killed Ukrainian prisoners of war could not be independently verified. Ukrainian officials stressed that Moscow did not require that a specific section of airspace be kept safe for a specific period of time, as has been the case in previous prisoner-of-war exchanges.

Some assessments by Western intelligence agencies suggest that the plane was shot down by a missile from Ukraine, although they could not confirm the presence of prisoners of war on board.

A French military official told The Associated Press that the country’s military concluded that Ukrainian forces had used a battery of Patriot surface-to-air missiles to shoot down the Il-76, at a distance of about 50 kilometers.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal the intelligence findings, said the Ukrainian battery apparently managed to remain hidden while it approached the target and then turned on its radar “just long enough to detect it.” hold true”.

Another Western official also said the plane was shot down by “a missile attack and not any mechanical failure” and that it was almost certain that the missile was fired from Ukrainian territory. The official said it was “not yet clear” whether they were Ukrainian prisoners of war.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the state news agency RIA Novosti on Friday that the Kremlin had not received a Ukrainian request to hand over the bodies. Asked whether Russia was willing to hand them over, he later told reporters that the official investigation into the incident was ongoing and it was up to Russian law enforcement authorities to consider such a request.

President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia would not only welcome but also “insist” on an international investigation by Ukraine into the plane crash, which he called a “crime.”

Yusov, the Ukrainian intelligence spokesman, said some of the Ukrainian prisoners of war who were scheduled to take part in an exchange on the day of the crash were exchanged on Wednesday as about 200 Ukrainian prisoners returned home.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, the main state criminal investigation agency, said Thursday that its investigation into the crash found that the Il-76 was shot down by one of the U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems targeting Western allies – namely the United States, Germany and the United States. crashed Netherlands – delivered to Ukraine. The USA has assured the Patriots that they will not be allowed to operate outside Ukraine

According to Russian officials, there were 74 people on board, including 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war, six crew members and three Russian soldiers. All were reportedly killed when the plane hit the ground in the Belgorod region near Ukraine and exploded in a huge fireball.

The investigative committee said investigators found over 670 body fragments and identified all the accident victims.

The committee said it also recovered 116 pieces of two missiles fired from a Patriot system near the village of Lyptsi in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. It showed a video that purported to show some rocket fragments lying in the snow with visible markings.

Ukraine previously claimed a cross-border attack with Patriot missiles in May 2023.

Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said in an interview in November that the Ukrainian military used Patriots to shoot down two Russian fighter jets and three helicopters over Russia’s Bryansk region in May, which he called a “brilliant” operation.

As the 1,500-kilometer (930-mile) front line remains largely static as the war nears the two-year mark, Russia has continued to attack Ukraine with long-range attacks.

In Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a drone strike damaged an energy infrastructure facility, leaving 100,000 people without power and 113 coal miners temporarily stranded underground, according to Mayor Oleksandr Vilkul. All miners were brought to safety after power was partially restored, he said.

Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said another Russian strike killed two French aid workers in the town of Beryslav in the southern Kherson region on Thursday. French President Emmanuel Macron called the attack “cowardly and outrageous.”

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John Leicester in Paris and Jill Lawless in London contributed.

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