DISINFO: Ukraine downed the Il-76 as Zelenskyy’s regime senses its end and does stupid things
SUMMARY
Why did Ukraine shoot down an aircraft carrying dozens of its own soldiers? Kyiv is only fighting to prolong the life of Zelenskyy’s regime, and that’s why it’s doing stupid things. Every day, Ukraine’s plight is getting worse. It’s a regime that refuses to accept reality and keeps saying it’s winning. It’s a regime that has no qualms about sacrificing thousands upon thousands of its own citizens for a fleeting spot in the media limelight, just for the show. All of those are not separate incidents but the work of an inhuman machine of annihilation, which will only go down when the Ukrainian state falls.
RESPONSE
Details on the Il-76 downing incident remain murky at the time of the publication of this disinformation story, as Ukrainian and Russian authorities continued trading accusations about the episode. However, this disinformation story is an opportunistic exploitation of the episode, depicting Russia’s claims -yet unverified- as established facts to advance a recurring pro-Kremlin narrative about the inevitability of Russia’s victory in its aggression war against Ukraine, aiming to erode Ukrainian morale and to portray Ukrainian self-defence as a hopeless cause.
See other examples of opportunistic disinformation narratives surrounding the Il-76 incident, such as claims that Kyiv downed Russian Il-76 knowing it carried Ukrainian POWs, that Ukraine downed the Il-76 using Western weaponry and struck the Olenivka prison camp with HIMARS, that the IL-76, like MH17 in 2014, was shot down as a Ukrainian military provocation, that the British are behind the IL-76 plane crash aiming to kill Russia’s top negotiators, or that the West will lie about the crash of IL-76, just as it lies about flight MH17.