US and German lawmakers must finally realize that by sending weapons to Kiev, they are helping a “Nazi regime” that has stooped to knowingly killing dozens of its own prisoners of war, Russian State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said on Wednesday.
The lawmaker’s comments came shortly after the Russian Defense Ministry reported the crash of an IL-76 cargo aircraft carrying 65 captured Ukrainian service members, as well as several crew and accompanying personnel, in Belgorod Region bordering Ukraine. The soldiers were being transported to the area to be exchanged, officials said.
Russian MP Andrey Kartapolov claimed that Kiev knew about the impending exchange and the flight route, but attacked the plane anyway. He stated that the IL-76 had been downed by three missiles fired from either a US-made Patriot or German-made IRIS-T air defense system, and suggested that further prisoner exchanges were out of the question for the time being.
Commenting on the tragedy, Volodin advised the Russian parliament to draft an appeal to the US Congress and German Bundestag, so that those lawmakers could “finally understand who they are funding.”
“This is a Nazi regime, nurtured by [US President Joe] Biden, [French President Emmanuel] Macron, [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz… they must understand their responsibility,” he added, urging Western legislators to impeach the aforementioned leaders.
Volodin claimed that Kiev had shot down its own troops in mid-flight: “Their mothers, wives, and children were waiting for them. They also killed our pilots… defenseless, who were on a humanitarian mission, using American and German missiles.”
Russia has repeatedly condemned Western arms deliveries to Ukraine, arguing that they only prolong the conflict. Officials in Moscow have also said that Kiev is actively using Western-supplied munitions to target civilian infrastructure both in Donbass and elsewhere.