WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia has called for an emergency U.N. Security Council session on Wednesday to discuss the crash of a Russian plane that Moscow says was carrying captured Ukrainian soldiers to a prisoner exchange.

       Russia has accused Ukraine of deliberately shooting down the military transport plane carrying 65 captured Ukrainian soldiers to the prisoner exchange in what it called a barbaric act of terrorism that had killed a total of 74 people.

       Lavrov told a press conference at the United Nations that Russia had called for the Security Council meeting to be held at 3 p.m. ET (2000 GMT).

       He called the downing of the aircraft on Wednesday a "criminal" act by Ukraine and said Russia sought the session so the Ukrainians could explain how the plane went down.

       "The Ukrainian prisoners of war were transported to the Belgorod region in order to conduct yet another swap that was agreed between Moscow and Kyiv," Lavrov said.

       "Instead of this, the Ukrainian side launched an air defense missile from the Kharkov region. It targeted the airplane and was a fatal strike."

       Ukrainian military intelligence said Kyiv was not asked to ensure air space security on Wednesday around the Belgorod area in southern Russia, as had been the case during previous prisoner of war swaps with Moscow.

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       It said Russia's accusations that Kyiv shot down the transport plane could be "a planned action to destabilize the situation in Ukraine and weaken international support for our state."

       (Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis, Arshad Mohammed and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)