ODESA. Dec 6 (Interfax-Ukraine) - Ukrainian Prosecutor General Svyatoslav Piskun has confirmed that the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office has asked Russia to help raise fragments of the TU-154 Careless plane that was accidentally shot down by a Ukrainian missile last year from the floor of the Black Sea.
This must be done in order for Ukrainian experts to draw their final conclusions about what caused the accident, Piskun told reporters in Odessa on Thursday.
Giving reasons for obtaining additional evidence, Piskun said that the outcome of the investigation will affect the fates of five Ukrainian generals involved in this case.
"We need the technical experts' conclusion, which should be based on more than one piece of the plane," Piskun said, stressing that the piece in question is 2.5 meters long and 1.5 meters wide.
Experts need a larger piece, "because there is characteristic damage that we need to study," he said.
"Therefore, we have suggested that the Russians help us investigate this criminal case and raise the debris from the seabed. I'm sure Russia will all it can to raise the debris so that we can study the situation objectively," Piskun said.
Earlier, Deputy Prosecutor General and Chief Military Prosecutor Alexander Atamanyuk said that the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office insists that the plane's fragments be lifted from the seabed in order "to prove the guilt of the officials who violated range practice rules." He said that Ukraine has already filed the corresponding request for legal assistance with the Russian Prosecutor General's Office.
It is technically possible to raise the plane, which is lying on the bottom of the Black Sea at a depth of 2,000 meters.
Russian rescue services said that it is financially and technically impossible to do it. Russia believes that Ukrainian officials are talking about lifting the plane in order to delay paying compensation.
The TU-154 airliner crashed into the Black Sea on October 4, 2001 after it was accidentally hit by a Ukrainian missile during a military exercise on the Crimean Peninsula. Seventy-eight people (66 passengers, mostly citizens of Israel, and 12 crewmembers) were killed in the crash.