MOSCOW. Dec 4 (Interfax-AVN) - There is no need to recover the debris of the TU-154 Careless plane hit by a Ukrainian air defense missile over a year ago, because investigation materials contain enough proof of guilt of the officials who violated range practice rules, a member of the state commission investigating reasons for the plane crash said on Wednesday.
"Contrary to the demands of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office, there is no need to recover the remains of the plane and missile, because we have objective facts and data confirming that a missile hit the plane. There are fuselage fragments and hitting elements. The remains of killed people with signs specific of a missile attack have also been found," the expert told Interfax-Military News Agency.
"The last fragment of the flight was restored through mathematical modeling, and it confirmed the hit of a missile, too," he said.
"Finally, the data from radar support assets located on the sea shore confirms the true trajectory of the missile that hit the plane," the expert noted.
"The recovery of debris from a depth of 2,500m that is not needed at all may take a long time and require a lot of efforts and money. It is not yet clear who will finance the operation," he said.
"There is a set of reasons for the tragedy. There were drawbacks in the missile launches security system, in the organization of launches, and, naturally, in the qualification of people who were at their workplaces," the commission member said.
Ukraine has already learned by its mistakes, he claimed. It has requested a permission to conduct launches of long-range air defense missile systems of the S-200 type at Russian proving ranges, because Ukraine's ranges cannot guarantee the safety of launches.
The TU-154 passenger plane of the Siberian Airlines flying from Tel-Aviv to Novosibirsk fell into the Black Sea on October 4, 2001. Experts concluded that the plane was hit unintentionally by a missile from an S-200 air defense system. The missile was launched from a Crimean proving range during an exercise of the Ukrainian Air Force and Air Defense. The plane crashed 185km southwest of Sochi. All the 66 passengers and 12 crewmembers died.
Ukraine continues to negotiate with Russia and Israel on the terms and amount of compensations to families of the killed passengers.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office announced on Tuesday that it wants debris of the TU-154 raised from the seabed to prove the blame of those officials who violated the range practice rules.