Tragedy over the Black Sea

Vladimir Putin asks not to rush to conclusions about the causes of the disaster

The reasons that led to the crash of the Tu-154M passenger airliner of the Russian airline Siberia, with 66 passengers and 12 crew members flying from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk, remain unknown. Within the first hours after the disaster, in addition to Russia itself, the authorities of Israel, Ukraine and the United States were involved in its investigation. Some were sure that what happened with the Tu-154M was a continuation of a series of terrorist attacks of “Arab” origin, perhaps even related to the American drama of September 11. According to another version, the plane was shot down during a Ukrainian air defense exercise by a missile that deviated from a training target. The American military was the first to talk about this possibility - US satellites monitored the exercises in Crimea. The Russian authorities preferred to remain silent yesterday until the evening about the possible reasons for what happened. In the evening, Vladimir Putin said that “the weapons that were used during the exercises, due to their tactical and technical characteristics, could not reach the corridors in which the aircraft were located, including the crashed TU-154.” “Everything I said is based on information from Ukrainian partners, and we have no reason not to trust them,” Putin said.

Theoretically, the plane could have crashed due to a technical malfunction or an emergency situation on board. However, given the circumstances of the disaster and the excellent technical condition of the liner, yesterday, according to the unanimous opinion of all experts, this version was considered the least likely.

According to the representative office of Siberia Airlines in Tel Aviv, the Tu-154M aircraft (tail number RA85693) made regular non-stop flight No. 1812. At 8.15 am (hereinafter Moscow time) the plane took off from Ben Gurion Airport and headed for Russia. He was scheduled to land at Novosibirsk Tolmachevo airport at 16.15. There were 12 crew members and 66 passengers on board - among them 51 Israeli citizens, mostly of Russian origin, flying to visit relatives, and 15 Russian tourists. At about 13.00, the crew reported to ground services about entering Russian airspace over the Black Sea, and came under the control of the Air Traffic Department of the Rostov Civil Aviation Dispatch Directorate. At 13.45, when the Tu-154 was approximately 180 km southwest of Sochi and 150 km south of Novorossiysk, the aircraft’s mark on the tracking radar and radio communication with it were unexpectedly interrupted. The dispatcher immediately asked all aircraft in that area to inspect the airspace, and literally a minute later, the commander of the crew of the An-24 passenger aircraft of Armenian Airlines, Garik Oganesyan, who was performing the Novorossiysk-Yerevan flight, got in touch with the ground. He reported that, being at an altitude of 6.3 km, he observed at an altitude of 11.1 km (the height that, according to the last report, the Russian aircraft occupied) a bright flash and the formation of a cloud of smoke, as well as the fall of burning debris. “I thought that there were military exercises going on in this area, and I contacted air traffic controllers,” the Armenian pilot said after the flight, “however, they said that there were no exercises here, but a Russian airliner was flying in this sector.”

Ten minutes later, the duty officer of the Russian Rescue Coordination Center in Moscow ordered all ships in the Black Sea to move to the suspected disaster area. At the same time, two Mi-8 helicopters of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations took off from Sochi. From the air, rescuers discovered several large oil stains, debris and several bodies in the water, and reported to Sochi the coordinates of the place where the disaster occurred: 42.11 degrees north latitude and 37.37 degrees east longitude. In the very first minutes of flying over the territory, the scouts reported that all the people on board the plane had died.

The rescue operation began by 4 o'clock in the afternoon - the dry cargo ship "Captain Vakulov", the border guard patrol boat "Grif", and two high-speed boats of the Ministry of Emergency Situations arrived at the scene of the tragedy. The weather in the area yesterday remained sunny, the sea was calm, and the crash site was examined quite thoroughly in the first hours. However, before darkness fell, rescuers were able to lift only 10 bodies of the dead from the water. However, experts said yesterday that the work will be carried out for now without any time limits - it is assumed that the bodies of the dead may emerge from the depths for several more days, in addition, there remains hope of finding the “black boxes”. The flight recorders installed on the Tu-154 are provided in case of a “water” accident, and in such cases they should, theoretically, self-track from the aircraft and remain afloat for an unlimited time. True, no one could yet estimate how reliable the technology would be in this situation.

As it turned out, the plane sank at a depth of approximately 980 meters. Yesterday, the leadership of the rescue operation announced that they intended to try to carry out diving work at the accident site, although no one knew how feasible this would be - as we know, the deep waters of the Black Sea are saturated with high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide and are literally dead.

To investigate the causes of the plane crash, representatives of all existing emergency departments flew to Sochi yesterday - the head of the Interstate Aviation Committee Tatyana Anodina, the head of the civil aviation service of the Ministry of Transport Alexander Neradko, the deputy prosecutor general for the southern federal district Sergei Fridinsky, officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, and even presidential adviser Yevgeny Shaposhnikov. All of them, by order of the president, were included in the state commission to investigate the tragedy, headed by the Secretary of the Security Council Vladimir Rushailo.

All experts immediately came to the conclusion that the cause of the fall of the Tu-154, with a 99% probability, was an explosion on board. But what could have caused it remains a mystery. In principle, experts do not rule out a technical malfunction of the aircraft’s components, for example, the fuel system. However, everyone unanimously agreed that the plane was in almost perfect condition. It was built in 1991, which by aviation standards is almost youthful in age, especially since in 1995 it underwent a planned overhaul. In addition, Siberia Airlines itself has always been in good standing with the security services and has never had any serious accidents.

The first concrete version was put forward by the Israeli authorities, who categorically stated that this was a terrorist attack. They closed Ben Gurion Airport for several hours for security reasons and to conduct an investigation. But last night the Israelis said that they did not yet have confirmation of the version of the terrorist attack.

However, the most sensational assumption came from the United States - representatives of the Pentagon and intelligence services announced that the plane could have been shot down by mistake by a surface-to-air missile fired during an exercise by Ukrainian air defense. The missile launches in Crimea were detected by one of the spy satellites. The US military said that it could be an S-200 missile with a range of about 250 km, capable of hitting targets at an altitude of up to 30 thousand meters.

It is known from open sources that the Ukrainian military has been conducting exercises for two weeks at the Opuk training ground, located on the southeastern tip of Crimea, which is only about 100 km from the site of the disaster. Representatives of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine behaved rather strangely, initially denying the very fact of training shooting. Then, having accepted it, they stated that air defense missiles during exercises are not equipped with warheads (in fact, the interceptor missile does not crash into the aircraft, but explodes next to it). Another fact, inconspicuous at first glance, turned out to be completely inexplicable - the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Air Force and Air Defense Anatoly Kornukov was present at the exercises, but he did not comment on anything at all, although, as a specialist, he could resolve all doubts - whether the missiles fired in that area were capable of Ukrainians, cause a crash of a passenger airliner.

Victor Paukov, Alexander Raskin, Yuri Golotyuk