Authorities finally concede that a missile on the wrong course hit the aircraft, following a malfunction at launch (297 words)

Published: 10/15/2001

Ten days after a Ukrainian missile from an S-200 system downed a Siberia Airlines (Sibir) Tu-154 on 4th October, the Ukrainian President, Leonid Kuchma, has finally acknowledged Ukrainian responsibility for the accident. The admission from the Ukrainian authorities came on Friday 13th October after some considerable prevarication. The authorities claimed that missile was not capable of reaching the aircraft, given its distance from the launch centre. But their stance subsequently changed after the Russian designer of missile system confirmed that it could indeed achieve a kill over 250 km and therefore could quite feasibly have shot down the airliner. The Ukrainian authorities also spent several days insisting that no missiles had been fired in the direction of the aircraft. Alexander Kuzmuk, Ukraine's Minister of Defence, initially said that all the Ukrainian missiles fired on 4th October were directed at target drones well away from the Tu-154's flight path from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk, only to acknowledge a few days later that this was not the case. According to Russian investigators, the cause of the accident was most likely to be a power outage affecting the system's ground based radar at Opuk firing range, several seconds before the missile was launched. The resulting launch of the system's missile was on the wrong course and consequently acquired the wrong target. There have been hints that some of the senior Ukrainian military personnel including the Head of Anti-Defence Forces, Vladimir Tkachev and his deputy, are under pressure to resign as a result of the accident. Ukraine has also suggested that the system's designer, NPO Almaz, shares some of the blame for the fact that it malfunctioned.

Article ID: 2824