Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Battleground with me, Patrick Bishop and Saul David.

Well, the headline story this week is, of course, the downing of a Russian

transport plane inside Russia, northeast of Belgarod. There were no survivors. This, it seems,

was a tragic error by Ukraine because on board were 65 captured Ukrainian soldiers who were on their

way to being exchanged for Russian prisoners of war.

Meanwhile in Israel, the political aftershocks of the invasion of Gaza are intensifying with

a former Prime Minister Ehud Barak turning on Benjamin Netanyahu for his handling of the crisis

and stating boldly something we've been saying all along, that Israel's stated war aims are

unachievable and at some stage a deal will have to be done with Hamas if the 130 or so

hostages they are holding are to be freed. We'll be talking about that and the wider tensions

bubbling in the region. But first of all, what do we know about the shooting down of that

Russian plane, Patrick? Well, there was some confusion when the initial reports came in yesterday

with the Russians claiming that the passengers on board the aircraft for Ukrainian POWs on their

way to freedom in one of the prisoner swaps that have occurred regularly since the war began. I think there have been

49 so far involving 2,800 people. The Ukrainians responded by cautioning news media against putting

out unverified information. But last night, in a video address to the nation, President Zelensky tacitly admitted that the

Aleutian 76 was shot down by a Ukrainian missile. Now, he accused the Russians of, quote,

playing with the lives of Ukrainian prisoners, with the feelings of their relatives, and with the

emotions of our society, unquote. And he called for a full inquiry to

establish the facts. Well, Ukrainian intelligence claims it was not told of the flight to ensure

that no attacks were made on the airspace corridor that the illusion was flying through,

as had been done on previous occasions. as well as the prisoners, there were six

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