Russian state media reported on Saturday that a Ukrainian military transport plane was shot down by Russian anti-aircraft defences, but there were no Ukrainian transport planes flying in the indicated region, only Turkish planes, according to the chief foreign affairs correspondent of the Wall Street Journal.
The Russian TASS news agency quoted Defence Ministry Spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov:
“‘Russian anti-aircraft defence forces have shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane near Odessa which was delivering a large shipment of arms supplied to Ukraine by Western countries.”
Yaroslav Trofimov of the Wall Street Journal commented on Twitter immediately afterwards:
“Russia claims it downed a Ukrainian transport plane carrying weapons ‘in the Odessa region.’ There are no Ukrainian transport planes flying there, but there were some flying from Turkey to Poland.”
No questions were raised in the international media and the report from TASS went unnoticed, and there were similarly no comments from Turkish officials on Trofimov’s claims about Turkish transport planes flying over Ukrainian airspace.
