MOSCOW, October 10. /TASS/. A Russian General Staff official believes that the head of Ukraine’s security service Valentin Nalivaichenko has unintentionally blabbed out a hint that might shed light on who was really responsible for the tragic loss of the Malaysian passenger jet over Ukraine last summer. In an interview to one of Ukraine’s television channels Nalivaichenko mentioned what he called a modernized Buk-M anti-aircraft rocket complex, which has never been a standard weapon of air defense units.

The source recalled that back in the early 1980s the Soviet Union authorized the Buk-M1 complex for service, and it was primarily deployed in the Kiev, Odessa and Carpathian military districts in the territory of what is now independent Ukraine.

“According to our sources, the Ukrainian army still has no fewer than 70 such complexes,” the General Staff official explained.

Since the late 1990s Russia’s air defense systems have undergone fundamental rearmament with next generation systems: Buk-M1-2 and Buk-M2. Both are still in service.

“As for Mr. Nalivaichenko’s statement, Ukraine has a modernized Buk, it may be a clear hint indicating that this type of military hardware has undergone upgrade at Ukraine’s own defense enterprises,” the General Staff officer said.

“Any specialist will confirm that such unauthorized intervention without the designer company (the Tikhomirov Institute of Instrument Design, in Zhukovsky, the Moscow Region) taking part surely worsened the complex’s accuracy parameters and reliability,” the source said.

The General Staff official suspects that Nalivaichenko made a big mistake when he mentioned Ukraine’s ‘modernized’ Buk launcher. It is appropriate to recall that a week after the Boeing jet disaster over Donetsk there was a leak from Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies about an unintentional missile launch during an exercise by the 156th anti-aircraft regiment, armed with 'upgraded' Buk launchers. One does not have to be a genius to piece this puzzle together,” the Russian General Staff official said.