Cause of Russian jet's downing unclear as international investigation continues (10/14/01)

Cause of Russian jet's downing unclear as international investigation continues

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Ukraine's Ministry of Defense officially continued to maintain on October 8 that its rocket defense forces did not down a Russian passenger jet over the Black Sea during military exercises the prior week.

The next day, Russian television reported that Aviation Marshal Yevgenii Shaposhnikov, the head of the Russian-Ukrainian commission investigating the incident, said that his group has found evidence that the plane was downed by an S-200 missile launched by the Ukrainian military.

According to the Associated Press, President Leonid Kuchma said on October 10 that he is prepared to accept any conclusion in the ongoing investigation into the crash on October 4 of the Russian plane. The AP added, however, that Ukrainian officials have thus far denied that missile-firing exercises in Crimea are responsible for the crash.

Ukrainian Defense Ministry officials on October 8 presented video footage of the flight paths of two radio-guided missiles, which they allege were fired at about the time a TU-154 airliner carrying Sibir Airlines Flight 836 went down, as evidence in support of their assertion that the Ukrainian firepower did not go astray and hit the ill-fated flight.

"At this time the information we have indicates that [Ukrainian firepower] was not involved," explained Col. Gen. Volodymyr Tkachev, head of Ukraine's Air Defense Forces, during a briefing at the Ministry of Defense headquarters.

The Air Defense Forces were holding live fire exercises on the southeast Crimean coast of the Black Sea on October 4, when the Russian airliner, on a flight from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk, suffered at least one explosion and crashed into the Black Sea about 114 miles from the Russian coastal city of Adler, located near the port city of Sochi. The plane was approximately 160 miles southeast of the military exercises, which were in their second and final day.

At the time of the accident, the Air Defense Forces were in the middle of live-fire exercises, during which 23 radio-guided surface-to-air missiles were being set upon various targets, including 11 target drones that were sent one at a time into air space in a 95-kilometer perimeter from the Crimean coast.

The distance of the TU-154 airliner from the military exercises was at the outer limits of the range of the S-200 and S-300 rockets that were utilized, which is one of the central explanations given by Ukrainian military officials for why it is unlikely their missiles were involved.

Col. Gen. Tkachev, making extensive use of visual aids, including computerized video footage, radar photographs and maps, re-traced the movement of two missiles, one an S-200, the other an S-300, which were fired at a drone minutes before the Russian airliner fell from the sky. He showed how the drone went to the edge of the designated perimeter for the live-fire exercises before turning back. Video footage showed a missile intercepting the drone and destroying it, which Col. Gen. Tkachev said was done by the S-300 at about a distance of 5.8 kilometers from the coast.

The Ukrainian general said the second missile, the S-200, then automatically self-exploded when it lost the radio signal coming from the drone. He explained that all test missiles are programmed to do so once they lose their tracking signal. Col. Gen. Tkachev showed video footage of the rising arch of a rocket and its plume, followed by a belch of smoke and a descending arch. He said the S-200 fell into the sea at about 75-85 kilometers from the coast.

A day earlier Col. Gen. Tkachev had rejected the possibility that a foreign radar signal had taken control of the S-200 and directed it into the TU-154 as unrealistic.

Asked whether an effort would be made by Ukraine's military to bring the rocket remains to the surface, the general said Ukraine today lacks the technology to do so.

Col. Gen. Tkachev's presentation still left open the possibility that a Ukrainian missile could have destroyed the TU-154. Air Defense Forces officials could not authoritatively prove that the missiles photographed were indeed S-200 and S-300 rockets, as the general asserted. Also, they did not prove beyond question that the rockets filmed were fired at the times displayed on the computer terminals.

While not questioning the assertions of the Ukrainian military, U.S. officials have continued to maintain that the accident was caused by a Ukrainian missile gone astray, a determination it first announced several hours after the accident when it said that data from a U.S. spy satellite suggested as much.

A U.S. Department of Defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, had told the Associated Press on October 4 that a long-range aircraft missile - believed to be an S-200 - appeared to have hit the plane after being launched from the Crimean region.

On October 9 the Eastern Economist news service reported that the United States had apologized for its disclosure of unverified information on the possible involvement of Ukrainian forces in the downing of the Sibir Airlines plane.

Col. Gen. Tkachev said Ukraine had received no information from the United States supporting its assertions and requested to see any documentation proving that a Ukrainian missile was involved.

Other sources besides the United States have indicated that an out-of-control missile may have been responsible for the destruction of the TU-154. According to the AP, a top Russian civil aviation official from the Siberian region where the plane was headed said on Russian television on October 5 that a traffic controller in Rostov, which is located not far from the crash site, saw a bright spot approaching the TU-154 before it disappeared from his radar screen. An Armenian pilot flying a small commercial vehicle at a distance close enough to see the plane in its last seconds said an explosion occurred before the crash.

RFE/RL Newsline cited an RIA-Novosti report of October 9 that quoted Moscow officials as expressing the hope that Kyiv will "make the difficult but only correct decision and accept responsibility for the downing of the plane."

Investigators in Sochi, who are picking through the remains of the TU-154 that have been salvaged, said on October 7 that they have found metal debris not belonging to the airliner.

Meanwhile, Russian authorities have backtracked from their original stance that the crash, which killed 66 passengers plus 12 crew members, might have resulted from a terrorist attack. The investigation, which will include Israeli and Ukrainian military and civilian officials, will now concentrate on the possibility of mechanical failure.

Israel has rejected any possibility that the air disaster was the result of terrorist activities in Tel Aviv. Minister of Transport Ephraim Sneh explained that security precautions at Ben Gurion Airport are the most stringent in the world and preclude any such possibility.

Russian authorities do no hold out much hope that the black box aboard the ill-fated TU-154, which might offer some clues to what happened, will ever be recovered. "I think it's unlikely from the bottom of the sea. It's from 1,000 to 2,000 meters deep," explained Gleb Gutiyev, a spokesman for the Sochi mayor's office, according to the AP.

Although Col. Gen. Tkachev attempted to show the irrefutability and single-mindedness of the Ukrainian stance during his October 8 press conference, there have been discordant voices heard within official Ukraine.

Initial reports from the United States apparently were supported by an unnamed Ukrainian military official taking part in the military exercises in Crimea who wished to remain anonymous. Then, on October 5, Prime Minister Anatolii Kinakh said that he could not rule out the possibility that a Ukrainian rocket gone astray was involved in the downing of the TU-154.

President Leonid Kuchma, who at first rejected any possibility that Ukrainian military exercises somehow caused the accident, backpedaled somewhat on October 8 when he declared that the probability of the plane taking a hit from a Ukrainian missile was "technically possible," while stating that "theoretically anything might be possible."

Later that day he said that he continued to support the conclusions drawn by his military leaders and that it was time to stop unfounded conjecture.

"It is time for the politicians to leave the debate and allow the experts to make the determinations," said President Kuchma.

Defense Minister Oleksander Kuzmuk said on October 5 that a group of Ukrainian military and civil experts, headed by the chief-of-staff of the Air Defense forces Valerii Kaminskyi, would be sent to investigate the cause of the air crash. According to an agreement reached with Russia, Ukrainian representatives will be included on the commission investigating the accident and will give Russia materials concerning controls carried out during the air defense exercises on October 4 in Crimea.

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