State Department: US relies on cooperation with Ukraine in IL-76 crash investigation

This was stated on Thursday in Washington by Deputy Spokesperson for the US State Department Vedant Patel, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"We continue to work closely with our colleagues in the Ukrainian government to find out the facts," Patel said.

In this context, he recalled President Volodymyr Zelensky's call for an international investigation into the crash, as well as the status of Ukrainian prisoners of war.

At the same time, Patel noted that the difficulty of interacting with the Russian side on this issue is that there is no independent coverage of the situation in Russia, and there are no free media there. And the Russian government is doing everything to make it difficult to verify the facts.

Read also: Ukraine to insist on international investigation into crash of Russian Il-76 - Zelensky

"So as of now, we just continue to maintain close communication with the Ukrainian government to establish the facts and find out exactly what happened," the US Foreign Service spokesman said.

As reported by Ukrinform, the representative of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine Andriy Yusov said on Thursday that the Russian side has not yet provided any evidence of the presence of Ukrainian prisoners of war on board the IL-76, which crashed on January 24 in the Belgorod region.