MOSCOW, September 22. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova hopes that the primary radar data obtained from the concern Almaz-

Antey showing the air traffic situation in the area where the ill-fortunate flight MH17 was lost over Donbass on July 17, 2014 will shed light on the circumstances of the disaster.

"While the Ukrainian president was deciding the future of Syria at the UN Security Council’ session the web-site of the Almaz-Antey concern published a news release saying it has shared with Russia’s investigative authorities some data regarding the air traffic situation in the area of where Malaysia’s Boeing was lost," Zakharova said on her Facebook page.

"As far as I understand, the radar information in question is precisely what the relatives of the disaster’s victims have expected for so long. Hopefully, these data will shed light on the circumstances of the Malaysian plane’s crash, Zakharova said.

As follows from the news release published earlier, in July 2016, after an official query from the Investigative Committee the concern’s head office asked all affiliates to share all relevant information at their disposal. The electrical engineering plant AO NPO LEMZ was one of those asked to probe into its data archives.

"The plant’s specialists scrutinized all archive data kept in store for the purpose of monitoring the quality of air traffic control radars to come across information dated July 17, 2014 that may prove of interest to the investigators: namely, primary, unprocessed radar images of the airspace. Currently all primary radar information available from AO NPO LEMZ has been handed over to Russia’s authorities concerned for further examination and subsequent handover to the Dutch side," the Almaz-Antey news release runs.

The concern explained that the AO NPO LEMZ is the manufacturer that designed and produced the air route radar Utes-T and is responsible for its maintenance. At the end of July 2014 the manufacturer’s specialists replaced the data carriers of the Utes-T air route radar in Ust-Donetsk containing air traffic situation data.

"Up to this day the retrieved data carriers were kept in store at the plant exclusively for the purpose of further control of the radar’s performance," the news release runs.