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Russian Plane Not Shot Down by Ukraine's Missile: Ukrainian Officials
Ukrainian officials Thursday rejected some foreign media reports that a Russian civil plane was accidentally shot down by a Ukrainian air defense system missile.
"Ukraine's missiles which were used in a military training exercise on the Crimean peninsula could not hit the Russian TU-154 plane," the Interfax-Ukraine news agency quoted Konstantin Khivrenko, spokesman for the Defense Ministry, as saying.
Spokesman for the Ukrainian Navy Nikolai Savchenko said that missiles launched from the navy's ships could not reach the zone of the Black Sea where the plane crashed. But he stressed that he was speaking only for the navy.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who is on a two-day visit to Ukraine, told a press conference here Thursday that it was premature to talk about the reasons of the plane's crash.
"Russian and Ukrainian military experts are presently keeping constant contacts to investigate into the accident," he stressed.
It was reported that the Russian airliner en route from Tel Avivto the Siberian city of Novosibirsk has crashed into the Black Sea with about 77 people on board, and most of them were Israelis.
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