As Russia entered the third day of its military operations in Ukraine, Ukrainian troops began to make new gains — the Ukrainians released information that they had shot down two Il-76 transport planes. But this was not confirmed by the Russian side. When the war is scorching, it is also the time when all kinds of war news is flying.
On February 25, Ukrainian air defense forces claimed they had shot down a Russian Il-76 transport plane near Vasylkiv, south of the capital Kiev. Ukraine reported that the transport plane was carrying heavily armed soldiers. However, the Ukrainian side did not specifically report casualties or survivors in the incident.
The Il-76 is a multi-purpose, fixed-wing, four-engine turbofan transport aircraft developed by the Ilyushin Design Bureau of the former Soviet Union. It first flew in March 1971 and entered service in June 1974. In addition to being a transport aircraft platform, the Il-76 can also be used as an aerial refueling tanker or command center.
Following the news of the shooting down of the first Il-75 transport aircraft in Ukraine, the State Special Communications Service of Ukraine announced the shooting down of another Il-76 transport aircraft in the Bila Tserkya area. Earlier reports did not report what mission the plane might have performed, and there are no reports of casualties. Both reports were confirmed by The Associated Press.
The Il-76 NATO code name "Candid", its role in the Russian military is roughly equivalent to the U.S. C-17 "Global Overlord III". It also plays multiple roles in the Russian military, from electronic warfare to early warning aircraft. In the Russian-Ukrainian War, it also carried out heavy transport tasks, which could transport important military forces, including paratroopers.
The photos of the downing of the Il-76 transport plane that are now exposed on the Internet are all photos of the wreckage of the Il-76 in Ukraine shot down by the Russian army in 2014. These include the Il-76's unique tail turret.
On May 14, 2014, a Ukrainian Air Force Il-76 transport aircraft was shot down by Russian separatists during landing in Luhansk. In that 2014 incident, 40 soldiers and nine crew members were killed.
Some social media accounts from Ukraine said the shooting down of two Russian Il-76 fighter jets was a "retaliation" for the loss of Ukrainian Il-76 fighter jets in 2014. Both Ukraine and Russia have Il-76 heavy-duty jet transport aircraft.
"Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky accepted the offer of Russian President Vladimir Putin and is ready for peace and ceasefire negotiations," TASS reported. No other Western media has reported the announcement by Zelensky's press secretary, Sergei Nikifolov.
There are also unconfirmed claims that Russian planes were shot down and fighting is taking place in multiple areas, which may indicate that Russia's progress has faced greater resistance than initially estimated, but specific information from both countries in the conflict has been difficult to verify. A report shows that a major offensive by Russian troops using the city's main road to the center of Kiev was intercepted by Ukrainian defenders. Like almost all reports from the region, these reports have not been independently verified.
As the conflict lasted for three days, one of the dilemmas of the war was the difficulty of obtaining accurate media information from official sources and social media channels. In the constant evolution of media in the age of social media, the boundaries between "official" media and amateur social media have blurred or disappeared completely.
As a result, reporting from the region either comes from journalists actually stationed in Ukraine, such as the BBC's Liz Dusset reporting directly from the Ukrainian capital via satellite and the Internet, or monitoring stories from observers outside the region on official and unofficial social media channels. Even private satellite reconnaissance companies have provided intelligence on the conflict, but lack of background information and have not been officially confirmed.
These disparate media resources either provide a very close view of the conflict, like "looking at the battlefield through straw," or they offer very broad and often less credible perspectives gleaned from media surveys that are susceptible to misinformation and disinformation. Because of the highly polarized portrayal of the war in the media, the sheer volume of information between these two news extremes has left observers around the world with little credible, substantive narrative of conflict to rely on.