Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the GUR, knew there were prisoners of war aboard a Russian military transport plane shot down by Kiev’s forces, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday. The full story of the shootdown will “become clear in a couple of days,” he added.

The IL-76 military transport plane was shot down over Russia’s Belgorod Region on Wednesday morning. Everyone on board – 65 prisoners, six crew members, and three Russian soldiers – died. The Russian Defense Ministry claims that the plane was brought down by Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles while en route to a prisoner exchange in the city of Belgorod, located near the Russia-Ukraine border.

The GUR was aware that Ukrainian prisoners were traveling on the plane, Putin said on Friday, according to RIA Novosti.

“The entire current Kiev regime is based on crimes committed daily, including against its own citizens,” Putin said. “The [GUR] knew that we were transporting 65 military personnel there … and knowing this, they struck the plane.”

In a statement issued on Wednesday night, the GUR did not deny that the jet was taken out by Ukrainian forces. Instead, the agency said that it was unsure whether the prisoners would be taken to the exchange point by air or other means, and that it “was not informed about the need to ensure the safety of the airspace” over the border region.

Putin said that material seized from the crash site suggests that an American or French air-defense missile was used to bring down the plane, and that exactly how the aircraft was shot down “will become clear in a couple of days.”

“The results of the investigation into the IL-76 case will be published so that the Ukrainian people know” what happened to their soldiers, he stated.

Russian State Duma Defense Committee chief Andrey Kartapolov has also alleged that Western weapons were used to target the flight, claiming that American Patriot or German Iris-T missiles were fired at the jet. A French military source told Radio France on Wednesday that a Patriot missile had struck the fatal blow.

“All currently available data points to a deliberate, premeditated crime,” Russia’s deputy representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, told a meeting of the UN Security Council on Thursday. “The Ukrainian leadership was well aware about the route and means by which [the Ukrainian] soldiers would have been transported to the agreed exchange point,” he claimed, alleging that “the regime in Kiev had decided this time to sabotage [the swap] in the most barbaric way.”

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The Irish government is taking legal action against the UK over a controversial law that halts new investigations into crimes committed during the decades-long conflict in Northern Ireland and potentially grants immunity to perpetrators.

Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) Leo Varadkar announced the move on Wednesday, saying that the inter-state case will be taken to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.

The case concerns the controversial Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act, which came into force in the UK in September. The legislation covers crimes committed during the violent conflict in Northern Ireland between 1966 and 1998, known as ‘The Troubles’.

Under the law, all such cases will be investigated by the government-appointed Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) instead of the police. Perpetrators can be granted immunity if they agree to give testimony.

The Irish government has “concerns” that some provisions of the act “will shut down existing avenues to truth and justice for historic cases, including inquests, police investigations, police ombudsman investigations and civil actions,” Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin said on Wednesday.

He also stated that the legislation is opposed by many in Northern Ireland, “especially the victims and families who will be most directly impacted.”

“The British government removed the political option and left us only this legal avenue,” Martin added, insisting that he had used “every opportunity” to get the UK to pause the legislation.

British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Chris Heaton-Harris said the UK government “profoundly regrets” Dublin’s decision and called the legal case “unnecessary.” He insisted the Legacy Act is designed “to enable more victims and survivors to obtain more information faster than can be achieved under current legacy mechanisms.”

The Troubles Legacy Act has been “overwhelmingly rejected” by a range of human rights groups as well as victims of the Northern Ireland conflict, Amnesty International stated on Wednesday. The organization’s UK deputy director for Northern Ireland, Grainne Teggart, said it welcomed Dublin’s decision. It claimed that the UK had “doggedly pursued” the legislation, which “shields perpetrators of serious human rights violations from being held accountable.”

The Troubles was a violent conflict in Northern Ireland between mostly Protestant unionists, who wanted to remain part of the UK, and mostly Roman Catholic nationalists, who wanted to reunite the state with the Republic of Ireland. The conflict featured multiple cases of British state collusion with terrorists and the imprisonment of innocent men, women and children at the hands of the UK justice system.

More than 3,600 people were killed and between 30,000 and 50,000 injured, according to various estimates.

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> Some eagle-eyed viewers caught the inconsistency. The same footage – but with the slogans clearly visible – can be seen, for example, in a Deutsche Welle report on the situation in Cuba. Demonstrators declaring that “the streets belong to the revolutionaries” are probably not the kind of Cuban protesters that Senator Cruz had in mind.

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Iranian drone and ballistic missile plants should be destroyed, a senior aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has stated. This comes after Tehran acknowledged it had handed over military drones to Russia, though it’s insisted that this was before the Ukraine conflict broke out in late February.

“I believe it’s necessary to not only impose sanctions and embargoes, I believe that it could be possible to launch strikes on drones and ballistic missiles manufacturing facilities [in Iran]. Such a state cannot continue doing this with impunity,” Mikhail Podolyak stated on Friday, speaking live on local TV. The official did not elaborate on who, exactly, should launch such strikes against the Islamic Republic.

Allegations around purported arms deliveries from Iran to Russia surfaced in recent weeks, after Moscow began using new kamikaze drones en masse in Ukraine. Kiev insists that the drones, known as Geran-2 (Geranium-2), are actually Iranian-made Shahed-136 UAVs. The alleged drone deliveries have left a major dent in ties between Iran and Ukraine, with Kiev downgrading its diplomatic relations with Tehran. Iran says it supplied drones to Russia before Ukraine conflict READ MORE: Iran says it supplied drones to Russia before Ukraine conflict

Both Moscow and Tehran have repeatedly denied arms deliveries have taken place amid the conflict. On Saturday, however, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian admitted that his country had indeed “provided Russia with a small number of drones months before the Ukraine war.” He also denied claims that Iran had supplied Moscow with missiles.

Podolyak commented on this admission, expressing doubts that such an explanation was actually true. “That is, instead of destroying our critical infrastructure, [the drones] have been laying in warehouses for eight months?” he said.

Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”

In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.