Russia claims Ukraine shot down plane carrying POWs
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00:00 Well, I'm going to bring in our chief foreign editor Robert Parsons now.
00:03 Rob Gulliver there was just talking about the credibility of this prisoner exchange.
00:06 What about the credibility of the report, what the Russians are saying, that the Ukrainians
00:10 shot down the plane?
00:11 Well, it's credible in the sense that the Ukrainians have the capability to do it.
00:17 No doubt about that at all.
00:19 And it didn't happen very far from the Ukrainian border.
00:21 We know that the Ukrainians have regularly been attacking the city of Belgrade, which
00:26 is very near where this incident happened.
00:29 So do the Ukrainians have the military ability to carry out attacks like this?
00:34 Certainly they do.
00:36 Would they have done it?
00:38 Not if they'd known, I would say, that there were POWs on board.
00:43 Were the POWs on board?
00:46 I think, you know, as Gulliver was just saying now, there is absolutely no way of knowing
00:51 at the moment.
00:52 Were the S-300 missiles on board, as the Ukrainians are claiming?
00:57 We have no way of knowing.
00:58 But when it comes to the capability, I don't think there can be any question that the Ukrainians
01:03 could have done it, given the fact that it happened so close to the border with Ukraine.
01:07 Rob, here we are coming up on two years of this war between Russia and Ukraine.
01:12 Where do things stand militarily at the moment?
01:14 Well, I mean, just one other thing I would say, I'll answer that question, which is just
01:19 a thought on, you know, what's going on with this particular incident at the moment.
01:27 Ukrainians are frustrated.
01:29 They have been under constant attack by the Russians on their territory for two years
01:35 now, without having real capability to strike back, thus far at least, into Russia, although
01:42 there has been an increase in the ability of the Ukrainians to strike deeper and deeper
01:48 into Russia, as we've seen over the last few months, using drones.
01:53 Just 24 hours ago, Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, was furious about the attacks
02:00 on Tuesday right across Ukraine, in which 18 people were killed, including a young child,
02:08 many, many private apartments destroyed.
02:10 And he said then the Russian war will inevitably be brought back home, back to where this evil
02:17 came from.
02:18 So there's no doubt that the Ukrainians have the desire to strike back into Russia.
02:23 I'm not saying this means that they struck this plane down, but they certainly have the
02:27 desire to do that.
02:29 That's why they're asking in part for the missiles that they've been asking for from
02:33 the Germans, amongst others, trying to persuade the Germans to give them Taurus missiles,
02:38 cruise missiles, which allow them to strike deeper into Russia, incidentally.
02:42 And it's one of the reasons why the Germans are reluctant to give them.
02:45 But on the wider question you're asking about where the war is going at the moment, it's
02:49 pretty much stalemate along that 1,600-kilometer front.
02:53 There is a little bit of movement here and there.
02:55 The Russians do seem to have the initiative at the moment.
03:00 But you know, when advancing 600 meters over a couple of weeks becomes a source of boasting,
03:08 it tells you just how locked into their positions the two sides are.
03:15 Very little progress being made.
03:17 The big concern for the Ukrainians, however, is that if they don't get sufficient weaponry,
03:22 they don't get sufficient ammunition to fight back against the Russians, things could turn.