Russian Defense Ministry publishes data regarding Malaysian Boeing crash

World July 21, 2014, 18:44

The ministry said it would hand over all materials to European and Malaysian experts

MOSCOW, July 21. /ITAR-TASS/. The Russian Defense Ministry on Monday published some of the data gathered as part of the probe into the July 17 Malaysian Boeing crash in eastern Ukraine.

The ministry said it would hand over all materials to European and Malaysian experts.

Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it hoped to receive Ukraine’s replies to the Defense Ministry’s questions posed on Saturday, July 19.

“We have satellite images of certain Ukrainian army air defense systems in the south-east of the country,” Lieutenant-General Andrei Kartapolov, head of the Main Operations Department of the Russian Army General Staff, said at a news conference.

Russian monitoring systems recorded up to 4 Ukrainian Buk M1 air defense systems in the crash area on the day of the accident. The point where the plane was at the time of the accident was within the Buk system’s coverage sector.

On the following day after the accident, the intensity of Ukrainian air defense system radar stations increased dramatically, the Defense Ministry said.

It denied Kiev’s assertions that there were no other flights in the crash area on the day of the accident and said that an aerial object had been flying over the crash site for four minutes to monitor the situation.

Also, the time of the Boeing crash coincides with the time when a US satellite was monitoring the territory of Ukraine. The Russian Defense Ministry said an American pilot craft intended for registering missile launches was flying across Ukraine at that time.

A high-ranking Defense Ministry official also said that videos allegedly showing the transportation of a Buk air defense system from Ukraine to Russia were a result of manipulation.

“This is clear manipulation. The images were taken in the city of Krasnoarmeisk, which is borne out by the roadside billboard giving the address of a car dealer in the city,” Kartapolov said.

“Krasnoarmeisk has been under the Ukrainian army’s control since May 11,” he added.

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