MOSCOW, July 27 /ITAR-TASS/. Russia has set up a group of experts to join an international probe into a Malaysian airliner crash in east Ukraine, the Russian Transport Ministry press office said on Sunday.
The group of Russian experts will be led by Oleg Storchevoi, deputy head of the Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsia) since May 2012, the press office said.
Storchevoi oversees Rosaviatsia’s main aviation divisions: the Flight Operation, Aircraft Flight Worthiness and Flight Safety Departments, the press office said.
Storchevoi has extensive flight experience and performed especially important flights for the transportation of top Soviet and Russian government officials. He was also a member of a crew that carried flights for late Russian President Boris Yeltsin. He worked for long for the Russian Transaero airline where he took part in developing and introducing the air carrier’s flight safety system, the press office said.
The group also comprises adviser to Rosaviatsia’s flight safety inspectorate Valery Luchinin, head of a department of the Air Transport Flight Safety State Centre Anicetas Jazokas and deputy head of the equipment inspection and quality control department of the Aeronavigation South branch of the Russian State Air Traffic Management Corporation Andrei Krylov.
Rosaviatsia head Alexander Neradko earlier said that the agency was ready to supply the commission working in Ukraine for the investigation of the Malaysian Boeing 777 airliner crash with all available information and send its specialists to study the circumstances of the tragedy.
Neradko said Russia had experienced experts for such probes as they had earlier participated in investigating the causes of the crash of a Russian Tu-154 airliner shot down above the Black Sea in 2001 by a missile fired from a Ukrainian S-200 air defense system.
“The group of experts who could participate in the probe has been defined. We expect that Russia’s authorized representative for participation in the air crash probe will be determined after formal approval procedures with the commission for the investigation being held by the Dutch side,” he said.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing-777 airliner en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in the area of combat operations between local militias and Ukrainian governmental troops in east Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Thursday, July 17. All 298 people aboard the plane, including 193 Dutch nationals, died in the air crash.