Moscow has accused Ukraine's military of shooting down a plane, which it says was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war
The plane came down near the Russian city of Belgorod, close to the Ukrainian border
"On board were 65 captured Ukrainian army servicemen being transported for exchange, six crew members and three escorts," Russia says
The local governor says there are no survivors - the BBC cannot yet verify who was on board, or what caused the plane to crash
Ukraine does not rule out shooting down the plane, saying Kyiv hadn't been asked to ensure the "safety of airspace near the city of Belgorod" at the agreed time
The plane was flying from the Chkalovsky air base near Moscow to Belgorod, Russia says
Nadia Ragozhina
Live reporter
Thank you for joining us as we brought you all the updates on the Belgorod plane crash.
This page was edited by me, Owen Amos and Aoife Walsh. It was written by Ali Abbas Ahmadi, Jake Lapham, Adam Durbin, Ece Goksedef, Kathryn Armstrong, James Gregory and Tara Mewawalla.
You can find the latest developments in this story here.
Here's a look at some of the main developments from today:
Russian forces have been pushed back in the town of Avdiivka, eastern Ukraine, today, its mayor says.
Mayor Vitaliy Barabash says the Russians "entered the southern part of the city of Avdiivka, but they were dislodged", according to AFP news agency.
Barabash did not say how long the Russian forces had remained in the town.
Avdiivka is a strategically important and fiercely contested town that lies right on the front line in eastern Ukraine. It has seen some of the fiercest fighting of late.
Russian attacks on the eastern Ukrainian town of Hirnyk have killed two people and injured eight others, local officials say.
Vadym Filashkin, the head of the Donetsk region, says rockets fell on a residential area at 16:00 local time (14:00 GMT), hitting a residential building and two high rises directly, as well as damaging dozens more homes.
Among the injured is a 16-year-old boy, who is in extremely serious condition, the official says in a post on social media.
Image source, Vadym Filashkin
Sarah Rainsford
BBC Eastern Europe Correspondent in Kyiv
The Ukrainian military intelligence statement is implicit acknowledgement from Ukraine that it did shoot down the Russian military transport plane.
But crucially it says it has no verified information on who was on board.
The intelligence service confirmed that a prisoner swap was planned today. It says it would normally get advance information on the routes and transport Russia planned to use.
This time, Ukraine says, it was not told to keep the skies over Belgorod clear.
It suggests that may have been deliberate.
Meanwhile, the General Staff has underlined why Ukraine’s military would target a Russian cargo plane.
There’s been a big increase in missile attacks from the Belgorod region, especially on Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv, hitting residential buildings there and killing civilians.
Planes like the Il-76 deliver the missiles which are then fired across the border by other planes.
There are still many questions about this crash, especially for the families of the thousands of Ukrainian soldiers captured and currently held in Russia.
They want to know for sure if there were prisoners of war on board that plane. And whether their relatives were among them.
Pratiksha Ghildial
Reporting from New York
Sergei Lavrov is addressing the Belgorod plane crash during his press conference
Here at the UN headquarters in New York, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov is giving a press conference.
In the past few days, he has been taking part in Security Council meetings on Ukraine and the Middle East and conducted some other bilateral meetings as well.
He has started by addressing what he says was a “terrorist attack” on the military plane that crashed in Belgorod.
He says Russia has asked for an emergency session of the Security Council this afternoon.
Image source, COORDINATION HQ FOR POWSMore than 2,800 Ukrainians have been freed as part of prisoner swaps with Russia
Ukraine and Russia have taken part in a number of prisoner exchanges since the start of the war.
There have been 49 prisoner swaps since Russia launched its full-scale invasion nearly two years ago, with Ukraine securing the return of more than 2,800 people so far.
The biggest swap so far took place earlier this month, when Ukraine freed 248 Russian prisoners of war and Russia released 230 as part of a deal mediated by the United Arab Emirates.
More than 8,000 Ukrainians, both civilian and military, are still being held by Russia, according to Ukrainian officials - who also say tens of thousands of others are still missing.
The Russian defence ministry said earlier that a prisoner exchange had been due to take place on Wednesday afternoon at a border checkpoint 100km to the west of Belgorod.
Ukraine's military intelligence service has just issued a statement, which says it has no "reliable information" about who was on board the crashed plane.
Ukraine "carried out all agreements" for a prisoner exchange due to happen today, the statement confirms. But it says it was "up to Russia to ensure the safety of our defenders under the agreements that had been reached".
The statement also says that Kyiv had not been asked to ensure the "safety of airspace near the city of Belgorod" at the agreed time - stating this was "something that had happened on numerous occasions before" in previous swaps.
So - although it doesn't accept responsibility for the crash - this could be seen as Ukraine accepting it was possible that the plane was downed by a Ukrainian missile.
The statement claims that "Russia's deliberate actions [were] aimed at putting the lives and safety of the POWs under threat".
For their part, Russia suggested on Wednesday that Ukraine had been provided with all the details of the prisoner exchange.
Image source, EPA-EFE/REX/ShutterstockThe new prime minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, has pledged to support Ukraine both diplomatically and economically, in a move that surprised many.
Following a meeting with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, Fico promised to allow Slovak companies to supply Ukraine with weapons.
He also said he'd support Ukraine's bid for European Union membership.
Shmyhal said: "Mr Prime Minister Fico underlined that he is fully supporting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our state".
Fico is considered close to President Putin, but he denies being pro-Russian.
He has recently called on Kyiv to accept "it will not win back the territory Russia has seized".
More from Ukrainian officials urging people not to speculate on what happened earlier.
Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine's parliamentary human rights commissioner, has appealed to people in the country to trust only official sources:
"Do not be fooled by provocations. More detailed information will be provided later", he says.
While the circumstances of how the Il-76 transport plane crashed are unclear, the incident likely makes it the third high-value Russian military aircraft destroyed in recent weeks.
Kyiv has not yet commented on how the Il-76 went down today and no independent evidence has been provided by the Kremlin to back up Russia's claim that Ukraine attacked the jet.
But Ukraine's military has claimed to have shot down or caused significant damage to highly valuable spy planes in the south east of Ukraine earlier this month.
On 15 January, Army chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi said the air force had "destroyed" an A-50 long range radar detection aircraft and an Il-22 control centre plane over the Sea of Azov the day before.
Russia said at the time they had "no information" about the 14 January incident, while the BBC has not been able to verify it took place.
Reports said the A-50 was shot down entirely, while Russian pro-war commentators suggested the Il-22 had been damaged by friendly fire and had landed safely.
Image source, ReutersRussia only has a handful of the valuable A-50 spy planes in operation, according to the UK's Ministry of Defence
Sarah Rainsford
BBC Eastern Europe correspondent in Kyiv
The General Staff of the Armed Force of Ukraine has made a statement following the Il-76 plane crash in Russia’s Belgorod region.
Russia is claiming the plane had dozens of Ukrainian POWs on board, who all died. It says Ukraine shot the plane down. It is important to remember that Russia has a long and proven record of disinformation and lies.
The General Staff does not address Russia’s claim or the crash itself directly.
Instead it talks of the need to reduce the threat of missile fire from Russia, especially in the Kharkiv region, which includes "monitoring the logistics of their delivery especially with the use of military transport aviation".
The statement notes the increase in shelling of Kharkiv region in recent days, saying that Russia launched 19 missile attacks in the last week alone, killing 16 people and injuring dozens more.
"The recorded intensity of shelling is directly related to the increase in the number of military transport planes that have recently been heading to the Belgorod airfield," the statement says.
It goes on: "Taking this into account, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will continue to take measures to destroy means of delivery, control the airspace to destroy the terrorist threat, including in the Belgorod-Kharkiv direction."
In broad terms, it talks of Russia’s "strategy of terror" in its war on Ukraine.
The President’s office has told the BBC they have no comment yet.
We're getting some pictures in from a photographer who has made it close to the crash site in Russia's Belgorod.
Police appear to have set up a road block near the village of Yablonovo.
Earlier local authorities said investigations were being carried out at the site.
Image source, Reuters
Image source, Reuters
Image source, ReutersThere is a "high degree of suspicion" in Ukraine over Russia's claims about the plane crash, an expert has told the BBC.
Peter Dickinson, from the Eurasian Centre at the Atlantic Council think tank, notes Ukrainian authorities are saying very little at the moment as they are "trying to clarify exactly what has taken place" in Belgorod.
There are "a lot of questions being asked in Ukraine about the official Russian narrative," he tells BBC News.
Dickinson says that Russia has very few of the Il-76 military transport planes available for use, "so it's odd they would use them to transport prisoners of war".
He adds that the number of people being moved could have fit onto a bus, train or even a passenger plane.
Moscow has accused Ukraine of deliberately shooting down a Russian military transport plane in the region of Belgorod near the two countries' border. Here's a look at the latest developments:
Ukraine has not yet commented on the plane crash in Belgorod, but a senior official has spoken to Reuters.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Zelensky, told the news agency:
Quote MessageComments will come a little later. Time is needed to clarify all the data."
Image source, Getty ImagesThe Ukrainian government has been facing funding and conscription challenges in recent months, as it continues to defend itself after nearly two years of conflict with Russia.
The country's counter-offensive last year did not make the gains that were hoped and it is proving more difficult to get further aid from its main backer, the US.
Those in power are also facing recruitment issues. Earlier this month, Ukraine's parliament refused to consider a bill proposing a crackdown on draft dodgers and to lower the conscription age
The BBC recently discovered that nearly 20,000 men had fled Ukraine to avoid being drafted into the war.
A further 21,113 men attempted to flee but were caught by the Ukrainian authorities.
We’ve showed the video of the Belgorod plane crash to two military experts and both have said it is consistent with an aircraft being shot down.
Mark Cancian of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies says: "The images are consistent with an aircraft being shot down.
"An aircraft can be seen losing altitude before the fireball erupts.” He adds that the smoke plume seen in the sky "is consistent with an explosion".
“There is a small trail coming out of the explosion, which could be a missile trail".
Christopher Petrov, a land-based air defence expert at Janes, an open source defence intelligence company, says the footage of the aircraft’s descent “indicates pre-impact damage”.
“Approximately one to two seconds prior to the crash, there appears to be a fire aboard, with a minor fragment of the aircraft detaching and descending independently, emanating from the plane's forward section.”
He adds that the plume of smoke in the video “may hint at the deployment of a surface-to-air missile”, but says a definitive identification remains uncertain.
Moment Russian aircraft crashes in Belgorod
Sarah Rainsford
BBC Eastern Europe Correspondent in Kyiv
Image source, ReutersThe last prisoner swap happened at the beginning of January
Ukrainian officials are currently investigating the circumstances behind the plane crash.
The office responsible here for prisoners of war, including exchanges, says Ukraine is "collecting and analysing" information.
It warned against what it called "special information operations" by Moscow, which has a long record of lies and disinformation.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces has only told the BBC that it has no clear information and is investigating.
Russia claims there were Ukrainian POWs on board the Il-76 aircraft, part of a planned prisoner exchange.
We can’t confirm that. A spokesperson for Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) told Radio Liberty in Ukraine that a swap was being planned for today "but is not taking place at the moment".
The last prisoner swap happened earlier this month, when 230 Ukrainian POWs were brought home and a similar number of Russians were also returned. The previous exchange reported before that was last summer.
We do know that Russia uses military planes to move Ukrainian prisoners of war around the country.
A former POW spoken to by the BBC in 2022 talked about being flown from a military airfield in Taganrog, southern Russia, closer to the spot where the exchange took place. Other released POWs have said similar things to Ukrainian media – much more recently.
As we've reported, a Russian lawmaker and the foreign ministry have blamed Ukraine for shooting down the plane - without providing evidence.
Now, Russia's defence ministry makes the same claim, saying its radar detected the launch of two Ukrainian missiles.
The ministry statement says the plane was flying from Chkalovsky near Moscow to Belgorod to transport Ukrainian military personnel for exchange.
"The plane was destroyed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces from the area of Lyptsi, Kharkiv region, using an anti-aircraft missile system. The radar equipment of the Russian Aerospace Forces observed the launch of two Ukrainian missiles," the statement says.
Blaming Ukraine for "neglecting the lives of its citizens," the defence ministry says the exchange was agreed for the afternoon at the Kolotilovka checkpoint on the Russian-Ukrainian border.
The Ukrainian leadership knew that Ukrainian military personnel would be transported by military transport aircraft, the Russians add.
As a reminder, the BBC cannot yet verify who was on board the plane - or why it crashed.