Russian air monitoring services registered a Ukrainian plane, tentatively a Sukhoi Su-25, sweeping up towards the Malaysian Boeing on July 17, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
“The Su-25’s distance from the Boeing was three to five kilometers,”
Lt. Gen. Andrei Kartapolov, head of the Russian General Staff’s Main
Operations Department, said at a press briefing on Monday.
“Su-25s are capable of climbing briefly to an altitude of 10,000
meters. An Su-25’s arsenal includes R-60 air-to-air missiles which can
engage and hit targets at a distance of 12 kilometers, and guarantee a
target’s destruction at a distance of five kilometers,” he said.
“Ukrainian officials earlier claimed there were no Ukrainian
warplanes in the area of the Boeing crash,” said Lt. Gen. Igor Makushev,
chief of the Russian Air Force’s Main Staff.
“That was not so, as you can see,” he said.
Makushev also said that the new object was spotted in the area where the Boeing crashed at 17:21:35, Moscow time.
“This air object was observed steadily by the Ust-Donetsk and Buturino radars over four minutes,” the general said.
The radars could not identify the plane, “as most likely” it had no
secondary identification system, which is characteristic of warplanes,”
he said.
It was impossible to spot this aircraft earlier because the airspace
was being monitored by standby radars with the capability of detecting
planes within this range at an altitude above 5,000 meters, he said.
“The detection of the unidentified air object became possible after it climbed to altitude,” the general said.
He announced that the Russian side has a video of the air situation
in the area where the Malaysian Boeing crashed between 17:19 Moscow time
and 17:25 Moscow time. Three passenger planes, including the Malaysian
Boeing, were registered flying during this period along the
international air corridor, he said.
“The plane started losing speed abruptly at 17:20 Moscow time at a
distance of 51 kilometers from the Russian state border at an azimuth of
300 degrees, which can be clearly seen in the table of the air object’s
characteristics,” Makushev said.
