The appeal hearing of the case of the crash of the Russian Tu-154 has begun

Yesterday the first meeting of the Kyiv Economic Court of Appeal took place to consider the complaint of the Russian airline Siberia (S7 Airlines) against the decision of the Economic Court of the capital. Last year, the Economic Court rejected the airline's claim against the Ministry of Defense seeking compensation for damages from the crash of its Tu-154 aircraft over the Black Sea in October 2001. The consideration of the case was postponed due to the absence of representatives of another defendant, the State Treasury.

The crash of a Tu-154 aircraft of Siberia Airlines (S7 Airlines), flying from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk, occurred over the Black Sea on October 4, 2001. According to the findings of the Interstate Aviation Committee, the airliner was shot down by a Ukrainian missile fired from the S-200B anti-aircraft missile system during exercises taking place in Crimea. 78 people died - 51 Israeli citizens and 27 Russian citizens. In October 2004, the Prosecutor General's Office closed the previously initiated criminal case due to the lack of corpus delicti in the actions of Defense Ministry officials. According to investigators, a fatal combination of circumstances led to the disaster. However, Siberia Airlines filed a lawsuit with the Economic Court of Kyiv, in which it demanded that the Ministry of Defense and the State Treasury compensate for material damage in the amount of $15 million caused to it as a result of the plane crash.

Hearings on this case began in 2004. The Russian side's claims were based on the results of an investigation by the Interstate Aviation Committee. These conclusions were questioned by representatives of the Ministry of Defense, who insisted on conducting an additional examination at the Kiev Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise (KNIISE), which was completed in 2010. Based on the conclusion of the KNIISE, representatives of the military department in the court of first instance were able to prove that the Tu-154 could not have been shot down by a Ukrainian missile. As a result, the Economic Court rejected the claim of Siberia Airlines in September last year ( see Kommersant of September 7, 2011 ).

The Russian side appealed the decision of the Kyiv Economic Court to the Kiev Economic Court of Appeal, the first meeting of which took place yesterday. The claims of Siberia Airlines, whose interests were represented by Alexandra Pavlenko, partner of the Pavlenko and Poberezhnyuk legal group, remained the same - to compensate for material damage. At the beginning of the hearing, Ms. Pavlenko asked the court to request from the Prosecutor General's Office copies of the results of 84 examinations that were carried out during the investigation of the criminal case opened on the fact of the plane crash, as well as a list of fragments of the Tu-154 that were available on the territory of Ukraine in 2010, when KNIISE conducted the examination. It should be noted that after the plane crash, all aircraft wreckage found on the surface of the Black Sea was transferred for storage to the airport in Sochi (Russian Federation). “We know that in the materials at the disposal of the Prosecutor General’s Office, there are more than 80 documents that can be evidence and should be examined,” explained Alexandra Pavlenko. “And, finally, the most important question: in what quantity of plane wreckage entered the territory of Ukraine and how many there were at the time of the examination at KNIISE."

In response, Defense Ministry spokesman Andrei Kozlov immediately tried to clarify the fate of the plane wreckage. He provided documents indicating that all 404 pieces of Tu-154 described by the commission investigating the plane crash in 2001 were placed at the disposal of the Ukrainian side. “Later, experts claimed that they examined all 404 fragments,” Mr. Kozlov clarified. However, the plaintiff's representatives emphasized that they were interested in how much evidence was available in 2010, and not earlier, after which presiding judge Vyacheslav Zelenin announced a break.

Five minutes later, Mr. Zelenin announced the postponement of the consideration of the complaint of Siberia Airlines to February 6 due to the failure of a representative of another defendant, the State Treasury, to appear in court. The judge also noted that all petitions of the plaintiff will be considered in the prescribed manner.

Denis Popovich

The court has reached new heights