MOSCOW. Oct 10 (Interfax-AVN) - The statement by Valentyn Nalyvaichenko saying that the Malaysian Boeing was shot down with a modernized surface-to-air missile Buk-M confirms once again that the militia and the Russian military have nothing to do with this tragedy, a source in the Russian General Staff told Interfax-AVN.
"The air defense units have never had surface-to-air systems called Buk-M, which are mentioned by Nalyvaichenko in his interview with a Ukrainian television channel," the officer said.
The source recalled that a missile system Buk-M1 was put into service in the USSR in the 1980s and the missile systems were supplied primarily to the western regions of the country, mainly to the Kyiv, Odesa and Transcarpathia Military Districts, which were located on the territory of today's Ukraine. "According to our information, the Ukrainian army now has at least 70 such systems," the source said.
The source said the Russian air defense troops have been re-equipped with more modern systems such as Buk-M1-2 and Buk-M2 since the late 1990s.
As to the statement by Nalyvaichenko about "a modernized Buk, he is probably talking about a surface-to-air missile system that was indeed modernized by Ukroboronprom enterprises," the officer said. "We knew about the work done on the Buk in Ukraine. By the way, this information was confirmed in late June 2014 by a report posted on the official website of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry saying that a modernized Buk system had been out into service," the source said.
"Any specialist will confirm that this modernization, which was done without the involvement of the developer (NIIP, based in Zhukovsky, Moscow region) negatively impacted the precision characteristics and the reliability of the system," the source said.
"Nalyvaichenko obviously let it slip about the modernized Ukrainian Buk," the officer said.
The source said, citing information provided by a source in the Ukrainian defense and security agencies a week after the crash, that an unauthorized missile launch was conducted on the day of the tragedy by the 156th surface-to-air regiment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which has modernized Buk systems.