The situation with the Tu-154 passenger jet crash over the Black Sea is so puzzling that even now it is everybody’s guess what really caused the accident.
The Sibir airliner, on a chartered flight from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk at the altitude of 11 km and the speed of 850 kilometers per hour, vanished from radar screens on October 4 at 12:45 Kyiv time. The Sibir Air Company website reports that 78 people, including 12 crew members, were onboard. Almost half the seats were not taken. According to the BBC, the overwhelming majority of passengers were citizens of Israel and fifteen of Russia. The crash occurred 185 kilometers off the Russian Black Sea coast. Rescuers recovered 14 bodies and later delivered them to Sochi, the headquarters of a government investigative commission headed by Viktor Rushailo, Secretary of the Russian Federation Security Council. As reported by www.defence-ua.com, antiaircraft missiles were fired as part of a planned tactical exercise scheduled for September 28 through October 12 at the territory of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s 31st research center near the Cape of Opuk. The exercise involved firings of the S-200, S-300, S-125, Buk and Kub air defense missile systems, as well as of the R- 300 medium-range missiles.
That the accident occurred a few hundred kilometers away from the venue of a Ukrainian air defense exercise made it possible to advance a version about involvement of the Ukrainian military in the tragedy. But the latter categorically deny this allegation.
“Proceeding from objective control data currently available, there is no evidence pointing to the Ukrainian air defenses involvement in or with the TU-154 crash,” Colonel General Volodymyr Tkachiov, Ukrainian air defense commander, told a press conference yesterday.The air defense commander stressed that the military exercise had taken place only in the nearby area, while the Russian passenger aircraft crashed into the Black Sea more than 250 kilometers away. In addition, all security arrangements had been made, including blocking the adjacent sea and air space. A total of 23 missiles had been launched during the exercise, he said, and that only one launch coincided with the crash in terms of characteristics and in time (12:47 Kyiv Time). The colonel general displayed minute-by-minute instrument readings and video tapes from the site of the military exercise, explaining that around 12:39 a target flying at a distance of 96-98 km from the missile-launching system started taking a turn, approaching the site.
At 12:41, with 36 km. separating the target from the missile-launch system, two missiles, S-200 and S-300PS, took off (the colonel general specified that each target had to be hit with several missiles). At the same time, judging from instrument readings, two passenger aircraft, an AN- 26 and TU-154, were airborne on the route. Three minutes later, as 12:44, the TU-154 vanished from the radar screens. Precisely when (in the colonel general’s words) the S-200 missile had self-destructed, the one that could have otherwise hit the passenger jet, at a distance of 75-80 km. from the launch site, because the target had been hit by S-300PS.
Volodymyr Tkachiov added that the S-200 missile could not have possibly hit the TU-154, because the missile’s engine was designed to keep it propelled for 51 seconds; given a velocity of 1 km/sec., the missile could not have possibly covered the distance to the Russian passenger aircraft. By the time it vanished from the radar screens, that missile’s engine was no longer working. S-200 characteristics do not allow the missile to home in on a target by itself, so the random target choice allegation is impossible, the colonel general declared. When queried by journalists, Tkachiov stressed that Ukraine does not practice looking for fallen missiles, but that he had sufficient data to show precisely where that particular missile had dropped.
In conjunction with repeated US media allegations, blaming the Ukrainian military for the Russian passenger jet crash, Ukrainian air defense commander Volodymyr Tkachiov said that the US side has not supplied the Ukrainian military with any such incriminating evidence. “If they have any such data, we would appreciate receiving it,” he declared. It is also true, however, that Russian President Vladimir Putin made it clear he was dissatisfied with the range of information data provided by the Ukrainian military. It is also true that many Ukrainian citizens feel rather skeptical about the Ukrainian military’s arguments. And there is more to it than drawing parallels with the tragedy at Brovary (when the Ukrainian Defense Ministry admitted to inadvertently hitting an apartment building several days after the fact).
INCIDENTALLY
President Leonid Kuchma has once again emphasized Ukraine’s being interested in establishing the truth in the TU-154 case.
“As never before, we are interested in establishing the truth, no matter what this truth will reveal,” Mr. Kuchma told journalists yesterday. He stressed that the possibility of a Ukrainian missile hitting the Russian passenger aircraft was technically impossible, adding, however, that “anything is possible in theory.” He said had twice discussed the situation with Russian President Putin: “Considering that the missiles involved were of Russian design and manufacture, we agreed that both sides are interested in finally solving the matter.” The Ukrainian president reminded those present that a large group of Ukrainian military experts had flown to Sochi to study everything on the spot.
