MOSCOW, June 2. /TASS/. Russia’s weapons manufacturer Almaz-Antei is prepared to stage an experiment at its own expense proving that the Malaysian Airlines’ flight MH17 was downed by a missile launched with a Buk-M1 system, the concern’s CEO Yan Novikov said on Tuesday.
"If necessary, we will be prepared to stage a full-scale real-life experiment attended by independent observers and experts," he said. "In other words, we will blow up a 9M38M1 missile placed next to the fuselage of the same manufacturer’s written-off plane at the angles mentioned at this presentation."
"Our presentation has proved that the guided missile that hit the [Malaysian] Boeing in the sky above Ukraine could only be 9M38M1 of the Buk M1 system," Yan Novikov said. "This missile was withdrawn from production in 1999. Therefore, the concern and its companies could have supplied these missiles to no one in the 21st century."
Yan Novikov said the arms manufacturer is not in the position to comment who fired the missile.
"According to our estimates, the missile was launched from a position near Zaroshchenskoye. The error margin is 1.5 kilometers. We make no comment as to who controlled the area at the moment," he said in reply to a question.
"At the same time we have irrefutable evidence this type of missiles is still in service in the Ukrainian armed forces. Back in 2005 the concern conducted pre-contract work on prolonging the service life of these weapons in Ukraine. At that moment there were 991 such missiles there," Novikov said.
"We do not dismiss other versions, but if it is true that the Boeing liner was shot down by an air defense missile, the Buk-M1 system and the mentioned rocket were the sole possibility, he said.
US satellite data might help find out who downed flight MH17
Novikov said data from US military satellites the United States mentioned at a certain point might prove very helpful in efforts to establish who is to blame for shooting down the aircraft.
He believes that images of the area taken at the moment of the disaster from US satellites "would certainly provided a clear answer to the question who is to blame."
"I do hope that the information will be handed over to the commission for identifying those responsible," Novikov said.
Traces of Buk-M1 missile’s fragments identified in MH17 debris
An adviser to the general designer of the Almaz-Antei corporation, Mikhail Malyshevsky, earlier told the media that the loss of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine last summer was due to the effects of a guided air defense missile, .
"The most characteristic damages allowed for making a conclusion the plane crashed due to an impact of a guided air defense missile," he said.
The advisor said the examined fragments of the ill-fortunate Malaysian Airlines’ Boeing liner (Flight MH17), shot down over Ukraine last summer, bear unmistakable traces of fragments from a Buk-M1 air defense missile (9M38M1).
"One of the key features of missile 9M38M1 is a special scalpel-shaped cloud of shrapnel (accounting for 40% of the fragments’ total mass). That special feature has now been simulated," Malyshevsky said at an Almaz-Antei presentation devoted to the MH17 probe.
"It was these traces, identified on the aircraft’s skin, which allowed to say with a high degree of probability the missile’s flight path," Malyshevsky said.
According to Malyshevsky, the missile that downed the aircraft was launched from the vicinity of the Ukrainian village of Zaroshchenskoye and could not have been launched from the Snezhnoye village.
"The data analysis allows for verifiably excluding the version that the airliner was damaged by a missile launched from the populated settlement of Snezhnoye," the adviser said while presenting the results of the company’s probe into the Malaysian MH17 flight crash.
"We have calculated the most probable area [of the launch]. This is the area to the south of village of Zaroshchenskoye," Mikhail Malyshevsky said.
Mikhail Malyshevsky also reminded that several days after the Boeing airliner was downed, it was claimed without any proof that the plane was downed with a Buk medium-range antiaircraft system from the settlement of Snezhnoye.
"But at that moment, none of the experts had come to the plane crash site," he said.