Zelenskyy accuses Russia of 'playing with lives' after POW plane downed

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Moscow of "playing with the lives of Ukrainian prisoners", following a deadly plane crash in western Russia. 

Ukraine's president has called for an international inquiry into Wednesday's crash that killed all 74 people onboard.

Russia claims the passengers were Ukrainian prisoners of war headed for a swap. 

The Il-76 plane was downed on Wednesday in the Belgorod region near Ukraine's border, with 65 Ukrainian POWs, six Russian crew and three escorts on board. 

Moscow has called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting into the incident, accusing Kyiv of shooting it down. 

Russia has offered no evidence about the crash. Ukraine has said it was looking into the incident but did not immediately provide any information. Instead, it cautioned against sharing “unverified information.”

Videos of the plane crashing shared on social media show the aircraft falling from the sky in a snowy, rural area. A huge blaze can be seen rising from the spot where the plane crashed.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia wanted to discuss the circumstances of a plane crash and that the full facts were still being verified.

“Ukrainian prisoners of war were transported to the Belgorod region to carry out the next exchange agreed between Moscow and Kyiv," he said. 

"Instead of this exchange taking place, the Ukrainian side attacked this plane with anti-aircraft missiles from the Kharkiv region, which became fatal.”

Since Russia's invasion almost two years ago, Moscow and Kyiv have traded conflicting accusations on a range of events. 

Establishing the facts has often been difficult, both because of the constraints of a war zone and because each side tightly controls information.

Lavrov also stated that Russia