MOSCOW, January 24. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is steering his country to a terrible finale and compared him to a classic drug baron from US movies who indiscriminately exterminates his own people.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Ukrainian military shot down a Russian Il-76 military transport plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners for exchange over the territory of the Belgorod Region. There were 74 people on board, including 65 Ukrainian military personnel. Nobody survived.

"What a terrible but so natural ending this US thriller called Project Ukraine has," Zakharova wrote in her Telegram feed. "Classic US movies about drug barons ended with scenes showing mountains of cocaine and erratic gunfire, with their own people dying in the carnage. Zelensky plays this role with quality, as if trying to prove he is worthy of the Oscar statuette handed to him by Sean Penn (US actor and director - TASS)."

Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry slammed the incident as a terrorist attack and stressed that Kiev had been well aware of the pre-arranged transportation of prisoners for the exchange, which was to take place at Kolotilovka. It attacked the plane with the aim to accuse Moscow of killing Ukrainian prisoners of war. In turn, the Russian Foreign Ministry's envoy for the Kiev regime's crimes, Rodion Miroshnik, said that Kiev had committed an act of insane barbarism by shooting down the Il-76 and questioned the possibility of any agreements.