Russia military plane crash: Moscow points finger at Ukraine, Kyiv calls for investigation
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Transcript
00:00 The very latest on this story, I'm joined by our chief foreign editor, Rob Parsons.
00:03 Rob, here we are 24 hours after this accident.
00:06 What more do we know?
00:07 Well, there's still a lot of confusion.
00:09 A few things are becoming a little bit clearer.
00:11 We know for certain that the plane was shot down
00:14 and that an exchange of prisoners should have taken place
00:19 at the Ukrainian-Russian border on Wednesday.
00:22 It didn't happen.
00:24 We've heard Sergei Lavrov talking about what happened.
00:27 He's called for a meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
00:30 It's going to happen behind closed doors.
00:32 He's calling it monstrous.
00:34 Initially, Ukraine did seem to suggest that it was responsible
00:40 for shooting the plane down when the story first broke,
00:43 saying that there had been a cargo on board of S-300 missiles.
00:47 And subsequently, they started to row back,
00:52 which does suggest that there was a certain amount of knowledge
00:57 at that stage on the part of the Ukrainians.
01:00 An investigation has been held by the Ukrainians.
01:03 They're saying that they have no idea who was on board that plane.
01:08 And that seems to be the critical issue here.
01:11 They say that normally when an exchange takes place
01:14 between the Russians and the Ukrainians, and quite a few of them have happened now,
01:17 the Russians, if they're flying in the POWs
01:21 to Belgorod near the border, will inform the Ukrainians in advance
01:26 of the vehicle being used, if it's an aircraft, it's an aircraft, the flight path,
01:31 how many people are on board, who is on board and so on and so forth
01:35 to avoid any sort of incident of the kind that we're talking about now.
01:40 No information of that kind, according to the Ukrainians,
01:43 was provided by the Russian side.
01:46 Now, almost implicitly, that suggests that the Ukrainians are saying,
01:51 yes, we were responsible for this, but we just didn't know
01:55 that there were any POWs on board.
01:57 We shot the plane down,
02:00 believing it to contain S-300 missiles.
02:03 Now, there is no reason why the Ukrainian side would have shot down
02:07 a Russian plane if they had known that there were Ukrainian prisoners of war on board.
02:12 The Ukrainians, for their part, are now calling for an international investigation.
02:17 So this comes as the U.S.
02:20 seems to be one step closer to confiscating Russian assets.
02:24 What more do we know about that? And does that relate?
02:26 Yeah, I mean, one step closer.
02:28 A number of efforts are afoot to try and provide funding
02:33 for Ukraine's war effort, for its reconstruction, for funding,
02:37 its administration, social services and so on and so forth.
02:41 Money that has been drying up recently, that 61 billion
02:45 that Congress is meant to approve for financing Ukraine's war effort,
02:49 the 50 billion that the Europeans were meant to have approved.
02:53 Looks like it could well be approved now on at the EU summit on February the 1st.
02:59 And this is a separate thing.
03:01 It refers to the 300 billion Russian assets that are held not just in the United States,
03:07 but in the European Union, Japan, Canada as well,
03:10 which froze Russian assets after the start of the war.
03:14 There was about five to six billion held in the United States,
03:18 and Congress is gradually going through its gears to get that confiscation in place.
03:23 So the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House
03:27 Foreign Affairs Committee both approved by substantial margins
03:31 a bill to authorize the confiscation of Russian assets held in the United States.
03:38 That would be a first in the United States
03:40 with a country with whom it is not at war.
03:43 It would then have to go through the Senate and through the House
03:47 and then have to be approved by President Biden himself.
03:49 But it's getting closer.
03:52 It doesn't mean that the European Union will follow suit or that Canada or Japan will,
03:55 but it will be a major step for the United States to do that.
03:58 All right, Rob, thanks so much for that.
04:00 That's our chief foreign editor, Rob Parsons.