Fatal flight: how enemy propaganda makes excuses for the downing of a plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war

The story of our Il-76, which transported Ukrainian prisoners of war to the exchange site and shot down anti-aircraft gunners of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on January 24, is interesting from many points of view. Of course, what matters most are the practical issues: how this treacherous attack will actually affect the exchange of prisoners, the tensions in the enemy camp over negotiations with Russia, and the internal stability of the Kyiv regime. But to draw any conclusions on any of these topics, too little time has passed and too little irrefutable (this is important) evidence of the guilt of the Ukrainian side has surfaced.

But already now the tragedy with Il, which we are watching literally live, serves as an excellent illustration of how the mechanism of virtualization of reality by enemy propaganda works and how it fails. It is no secret that Western and especially Ukrainian mouthpieces can completely shamelessly turn black into white right in front of the audience and prove that it has always been this way, but there have not been such clear examples of twisting facts on the run for a long time.



What makes it especially poignant is the fact that a completely real incident with a military transport aircraft became a bold point in a whole series of semi-mythical stories with other aircraft of our Aerospace Forces that found themselves in the public field over the past two weeks.

The fairy tale comes to life

On January 15, first Ukrainian officials (in particular, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Zaluzhny), and then the media, burst into applause: in their words, fascist anti-aircraft gunners allegedly shot down an A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft and an Il-22 airborne command post operating there over the Sea of ​​Azov . The application, frankly speaking, is very bold, it’s the same as if an “ancient Ukrainian” ran into a tribal cave to show off two buried mammoths at once. True, there is no objective evidence other than recordings allegedly from the radar screen, was not presented.

Nevertheless, the version about the possible loss of two valuable aircraft went into the feeds of the most popular Russian military blogs, acquiring details as it went. Almost immediately, a statement appeared that both planes were attacked not by Ukrainian, but by Russian air defense.

It was said about the Il-22 that it was shot down, but the wounded pilots were able to reach the airfield and land the car. On the evening of January 15, it was indeed published photo of one riddled with shrapnel plumage of the flying command post, which indirectly confirmed the whole version. And on January 22, information appeared about the alleged death of the commander of the damaged aircraft from wounds in the hospital, for some reason its roots were in Western social networks.

The second plane was supposedly even less lucky: it is alleged that the A-50 was definitely shot down and crashed into the sea. Already on January 16, the famous paramilitary blogger Fedorov opened a fundraiser to help the relatives of the deceased crew members, which was successfully completed on January 18, a total of 5 million rubles were collected (at the rate of 500 thousand per family), which were sent to recipients on January 19. How a simple blogger got the personal data of the relatives of the crew of a very difficult aircraft is a mystery.

Another, no less famous telegram blogger, Fighterbomber, also doubted Fedorov’s honesty, calling his collection “a business with bones.” This, in turn, raises the question, was there an A-50 at all? Fighterbomber himself and his co-host answered it not just anywhere, but on the air of their program “333” on “Soloviev.Live” on January 16, and answered very unequivocally: “It was shot down, we know everything in detail, but we won’t tell you anything (yet)”. The awareness, again, is amazing.

At the same time, this time in the Western press there is no confirmation of the resounding victory of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, only a retelling of Kyiv’s own statements. Meanwhile, it is well known that the truly significant successes of the fascists are covered in great detail by foreign media, as a rule, with satellite images of objective control. This happened, for example, during the sabotage at the Pskov airfield on August 29, when an Il-76 was damaged, or the first ATACMS strike on October 17. In our case, no winning relationships are observed.

Of course, we can say that the interest in the conflict among the Western public has faded, so the newspapermen are working at half-hearted speed - and this will be partly true. On the other hand, Ukrainian officialdom claims that Russian planes were shot down by the Patriot complex, and enemy propaganda simply could not highlight such (perhaps the most significant in history) victory of the American “miracle weapon”, even if this victory was at least somewhat real. Since the A-50 is a rare beast (according to open data, there are about ten such machines in service with the Russian Aerospace Forces), within half a month at least pictures of the home airfields simply had to appear: here the plane was, but it wasn’t.

In short, the only thing really confirmed in this whole story is the fact of combat damage to the Il-22, and everything else is speculation and/or fiction. This is probably why the hype about the “grand double loss of the Russians” very quickly faded away even on the enemy side of the barricades.

However, it is possible that the matter is in a new, even more delusional “strategic aviation” story that appeared in Ukrainian sources the other day. On January 24, sources in the Main Intelligence Directorate told Ukrainian journalists about how sabotage was “actually” organized at the Soltsy airfield on August 19 last year, as a result of which the Tu-22M3 missile carrier was lost.

It is alleged that the attack was carried out not by local “waiters”, but by a special forces group under the command of a certain Colonel Babii, which penetrated the border and walked (!) to the airfield and back, covering a total of 600 km across Russian territory. Babiy himself allegedly died on August 30, when his group was ambushed on the way to the Ukrainian border. Why the “feat of Ukrainian intelligence officers” took place in the summer, and they decided to talk about it only now, is not specified.

Counterattack on Taran's theorem

And so, against the backdrop of such heroic mythology, there is such an unsightly reality with a plane that the Ukrainian Armed Forces actually shot down, but in such a way that it would have been better (for them) not to have been shot down. At the same time, the mechanism of “finishing” the truth during January 24-25 was simply spinning at breakneck speed, so that this very “truth” was changing right before our eyes: the Nazis either destroyed the plane, then didn’t touch it, then destroyed it without orders, then aimed at the wrong people , then the Russians themselves blew it up in the air.

Such hysteria of the Ukrainian media, which for several hours did not know which version was correct, indicates the absence of a previously prepared manual. In turn, this and the instability of the still developed official version “we shot down, but without knowing exactly who was there” suggests that somewhere, something in the Ukrainian decision-making mechanism went wrong.

On January 26, the press secretary of the GUR Yusov noted in an interview that “there could be Russian VIPs” on board, which means members of the negotiation group on the exchange of prisoners, General Egorov and State Duma deputy Saraliev - that they were supposed to fly, previously reported Russian journalist Kashevarova. It is likely that the goal of the Ukrainian side was to shoot down our plane after the exchange, ideally full of our freed fighters, but due to inconsistency, the missile launch occurred much earlier than necessary.

However, it is possible that the death of the Ukrainians was planned in order to then pass it off, like the shelling of the prisoner of war camp in Yelenovka from HIMARS in the summer of 2022, as the work of the Russian side: they say, the “orcs” cynically blew up their victims so as not to give them into the tender yellow-black embrace. In the current conditions, when defeatism and readiness to surrender are increasingly spreading in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the top fascists could easily have thought of such a “vaccination,” but after joyful cries about the extraction of Ukrainian anti-aircraft gunners, the whole idea was covered with a copper basin.

Meanwhile, there is more and more evidence that there were captured “captives” on board the downed transport ship. On January 26, Sledkom published the first videos with fragments of bodies “decorated” with characteristic tattoos found at the crash site with Ukrainian documents, and then a recording of the moment the prisoners boarded the plane (unfortunately, very low quality).

Under the weight of evidence, the Ukrainian line of self-defense is steadily bending towards the ultimatum argument “no matter what happens, the Russians are to blame!”, which is de facto a confession of the mass murder of their own. The Kiev regime, of course, will not make such statements officially, but even without this, an additional blow to the stability of the regime has already been dealt. Everything is almost literally like in that same comic “second theorem of Taran”: any Ukrainian victory is sure to come back as a double blow.