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Russia’s IC to contact source claiming Ukrainian Su-25 shot down Malaysian Boeing

"The Investigative Committee is probing into a criminal case of the use of prohibited means and methods of warfare,” Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said
Crash site of Malaysia Airlines passenger jet MH17 EPA/ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO
Crash site of Malaysia Airlines passenger jet MH17
© EPA/ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO

MOSCOW, December 23. /TASS/. Russia’s Investigative Committee (IC) will look into the version of the Malaysian Boeing’s crash near Donetsk, Ukraine, last summer, published in Tuesday’s edition of the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, IC spokesman Vladimir Markin told TASS.

“The Investigative Committee took note of today’s publication in Komsomolskaya Pravda. Naturally, the reported version based on depositions by an unidentified Ukrainian citizen is of great interest to the investigation, because the Investigative Committee is probing into a criminal case of the use of prohibited means and methods of warfare,” Markin recalled.

“We shall try to promptly contact Komsomolskaya Pravda’s editor-in-chief and journalists to find out if the person does exist in reality and to get contact information,” he added.

Komsomolskaya Pravda says it has found an eye witness claiming he has evidence the Malaysian Boeing passenger jet, which crashed in Ukraine last summer, was downed by a Ukrainian Sukhoi-25 fighter-bomber with an air-to-air missile.

The man whose name is not disclosed told the daily’s reporters that on the day of the disaster he was at the Aviatorskoye airfield, near Dnipropetrovsk, and saw a Sukhoi-25 jet leave on a mission and return to base.

The witness claimed: “About one hour before the Boeing’s crash three fighter-bombers had been ordered into the air… One of them carried air-to-air missiles. It was a Sukhoi-25…” When it landed, the plane carried no rockets, and the pilot, whose name, according to the anonymous witness is Voloshin, looked scared. When he was helped out of the cockpit, he reportedly said: “Wrong plane.” Later in the evening, when asked what had happened, the pilot replied that he “found himself at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

A Boeing-777 of the Malaysian Airlines, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala-Lumpur, crashed in Ukraine’s Donetsk Region on July 17. All of the 298 passengers and crew died. Many of the passengers were Dutch subjects.

In early September, the Netherlands’ Security Council published a report containing intermediate findings of the panel of investigators stating that the plane fell apart in the air after being hit with many objects flying at high speed. A final version of the report is scheduled to emerge within a year after the disaster.