Russia-Ukraine Flash Report 24JAN24 16:30 PST - Il-76 Shoot Down, What We Know

After three late nights in a row, I'm definitely feeling it today. This is going to be quick and raw because work on the SITREP has started, but I know a lot of people are asking.

• In our assessment, based on open-source flight tracking data, very reliable sources identified the tail number of the Il-76, the location of the crash, and the direction of the aircraft. The plane departed from Belgorod and was flying east-northeast.
• To further support this, the size of the explosion after the crash is very consistent with a significant amount of fuel on the aircraft.
• Open-source flight data shows the plane flew from Iran to Egypt to Belgorod, Russia.
• We are certain that the Il-76 was shot down, although we cannot determine if this was by Ukraine or Russia.
• We are confident that the plane was not shot down by the Patriot air defense system. If the Patriot system were in Kharkiv, it would have been used to intercept some of the missiles that attacked the city on January 23. It is widely known that one Patriot system is in the Kyiv region, and the other is in the Odesa region. Yesterday, the U.S. reported that Patriot ammunition was so low that Ukraine was now selecting which missiles to intercept based on their course and potential target. 
• At the time of the incident, the Belgorod region was under the third air raid warning of the day for a possible Ukrainian missile attack. This created an environment ripe for a friendly fire incident.
• Immediately after information about the crash started to appear on Belgorod's social media channels, residents of Belgorod reported that a large plane had recently departed from Belgorod International Airport, which is in the northern part of the city.
• Ukrainian officials acknowledged that for other prisoner exchanges, Russia has flown prisoners from the Moscow region to Belgorod but coordinated with Ukraine on the flight plans and times so both combatants could agree to a limited ceasefire. This isn't unique, with similar agreements made during IAEA inspector rotations at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (although those transfers are done on the ground).
• A POW exchange was planned for today, and Russia did not come to the cross-border checkpoint for the exchange. Ukraine did not report the planned number of POWs. Russia claimed it was 192 for 192 without evidence.
• It is critical to point out that if the International Committee of the Red Cross were doing its job, there would be no questions on the veracity of Russian claims that POWs were on the plane. In some ways, the impotence of the ICRC is the bigger story.
• The list of Ukrainian POWs reportedly killed, shared by Russian state media agency Russia Today (RT), contained 18 names of prisoners previously exchanged. The entire list is suspect. We are not working on identifying the list of names, and relying on open sources for that work, which is ongoing.
• Some Ukrainian POWs returned in other exchanges confirmed they were flown from Moscow to Belgorod but reported that the prisoner-to-guard ratio was almost two to one. Russian state media is claiming the ratio was 20 to one on this flight.
• Russian state media claims that the aircraft was a hospital plane are false. This is due to recent pictures shared by the Russian Ministry of Defense showing this specific Il-76 had been converted back to a cargo configuration.
• We are confident that Russian state media claims that the plane was changing course due to pilot intervention before the crash are false, given the videos clearly show the nose section of the aircraft is gone.
• We are confident that no one was throwing unknown items from the airplane before the crash and that the debris streaming off was due to the plane breaking up due to stress and damage.
• Because the Il-76 was flying away from Belgorod and crashed approximately 60 kilometers east-northeast of the airport, we are very confident that the plane did not have Ukrainian POWs on board to be part of today's planned prisoner swap. It cannot be ruled out with absolute certainty that no POWs were onboard. As we always say, the chance is never zero percent.
• Additionally, because of the flight path and the lack of secondary explosions, we are highly confident the plane was not delivering S-300 air defense missiles to Belgorod or carrying air defense missiles from Belgorod back to Moscow.
• Russia has not shared any pictures from the main crash site, which would be in a now snowless area and would have a significant crater based on the size of the explosion and the concussion from the blast.
• The next Sentinel-1 AWS-IW-VVVH satellite pass will provide some insight into the crash location and the size of the explosion, even with the existing cloud cover.
• Russia called for an emergency meeting of the Security Council, again, with France, which is leading the council this month, denying the request.
• We were provided intelligence from a reliable source from a third-party nation (not from Ukraine, Russia, or Iran) that the Il-76 had Shahed one-way UAV instructors and technicians from the IRGC onboard.
• I made the editorial decision to release the information on Twitter after several large news publications (AP, USA ABC News, Reuters-Thompson, BBC) published the Russian Ministry of Defense claims verbatim, despite open source information already showing the Il-76 flew from Iran to Egypt, to Belgorod, Russia, and concealed segments of its Middle Eastern flights by turning its transponder off.
• We are in the process of confirming additional information from our source, but this will take time. While Russia has gotten much better at operational security in the last 12 months, the IRGC is much better at it. To respect operational security, I am not in a position to reveal what additional information we have.
• To be clear, since the game of telephone has already started on Twitter (X). I/we did not state that Shahed-238 one-way drones were on the aircraft. I/we did not state that Shahed-136 one-way drones were on the aircraft. We stated that a new group of technicians/instructors was flown into Belgorod to support the deployment of the Shahed-238, and another group of technicians/instructors was being flown out. That second group was on the plane when it was shot down, according to a reliable source.
• As the metaphorical onion is getting peeled, some in the open-source intelligence community are looking deeper at the Iranian connection. Several people have reached out to us, and we are comparing notes.
• It is noteworthy that the White House has said it does not accept the Russian or Ukrainian account of what happened at face value, and intelligence agencies are making an assessment.
• We agree with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his call for an independent third-party investigation. Given Russia's lack of cooperation with other claims made by Moscow, such as the Olenivka Penal Colony massacre and the rejection of offers from BRICS nations to investigate the crash of Prigozhin's private jet, it is extremely unlikely Russia will agree to an investigation.
• In our assessment, something more important to Russia than Ukrainian POWs or S-300 missiles was on the Il-76 due to the furious and coordinated propaganda effort by the Kremlin and its proxies. This far exceeds the efforts made to explain the downing of an A-50U AWACS and the heavy damage to an Il-22M earlier in the month.
• Considering verified reports of extrajudicial execution of POWs and POWs tortured to death, we are deeply concerned that this will be used as an excuse to cover up existing war crimes - as was the case in the Olenivka Penal Colony massacre.

Why is the press publishing reports from Russia, Hamas, Iran, North Korea, etc., verbatim as the truth when, as recently as six months ago, there was a more cautious approach?

Layoffs.

Combined, numerous large news agencies around the world have laid off tens of thousands of employees. Fact-checkers, foreign correspondence, breaking news editors and writers, subject matter expert editors, and social media managers. Entire foreign offices have been closed.

Additionally, AI.

We have run some of our situation reports through AI engines and asked them to create an 800 to 1,000-word summary story. The testing was eye-opening. Despite setting clear guidelines for the AI to use AP Style, neutral language, and not to favor any combatant, it interjected language like the Ukrainian "crisis" into the story. In one stunning example, it took a segment about Somalian mercenaries captured by Ukraine in the Marinka area as an "indication of the diversity in the Russian Federation military."

What?!?!?

After running these tests, we can no longer unsee some of the AI language that has crept into news reports about war from numerous publications. Full stop. I/we are not accusing any large new agency of using AI to write complete stories. We are accusing news agencies of using low-paid junior editors with no subject matter expertise to write breaking news articles and run draft content through AI to create a summary and edit/rewrite as needed to follow the news agency's editorial guidelines.

The combination of drastic staff cuts, the urge to be first, clickbait headlines to drive ad revenue, and the increasing dependency on AI to summarize information has been catastrophic to the truth.

As we learn more, we'll share more.