Stolichnyye Novosti, Kiev,
10 Oct 06; p 3

RUSSIAN PLANE MAYBE NOT DESTROYED BY UKRAINIAN MISSILE, BUT BOMB ON
BOARD

US and Israeli secret services have evidence that the Russian
aircraft travelling from Tel Aviv to Russia that crashed into the
Black Sea in 2001 was not accidentally hit by a Ukrainian missile, a
newspaper has said. Its US correspondent reports that it was
destroyed by an explosion on board. Israel and Russia agreed to the
missile theory to prevent mutual accusations, because a group of
Russian experts on weapons of mass destruction was flying on board
the plane, the paper alleges. The following is the text of the
article by Dmytro Dymov entitled "Ukrainian missile did not bring
down Russian plane, was it blown up?" published in the Ukrainian
publication Stolichnyye Novosti on 10 October:

A week ago it was the fifth anniversary of the tragedy that took the
lives of almost 80 people – the disaster to the passenger liner of
the Sibir airline company flying from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk.

Our correspondent in America, on conditions of anonymity, was
informed of a sensational theory of the crash of the Russian plane
over the Black Sea. The American and Israeli special services have
reliable information at their disposal that the Tu-154 plane was not
brought down by a Ukrainian missile [during military exercises in
Crimea], but was blown up by a bomb placed in the luggage. The
explosion was also reported on 4 October 2001 and the only witness of
the horrific tragedy was the commander of an AN-24 of Armenian
airlines that was flying on a parallel route. He did not see any
trace of a missile in the sky.

So who destroyed the plane and why? Why was it that only one theory
was immediately launched into the media, which serious specialists
completely dismiss? The answer to the mystery, it is thought, lies in
the plane’s passengers. Not all of them, but a group of scientists
who had been in Tel Aviv at the invitation of their Israeli
colleagues. It is known with absolute precision that those people
were staff from the secret Novosibirsk scientific centre that was
developing weapons of mass destruction. It may be not only Muslim
terrorists that had an interest in their death, but also in theory,
for example, the Americans.

However, our collocutor believes that the explosion on board was
indeed organized by terrorists. But the Israelis and Russians agreed
on the "missile theory" in order not to accuse each other, making
Ukraine into the "scapegoat" once again. Military specialists from
various countries even then expressed doubts as to the ability of a
Ukrainian S-200 to overcome such an enormous distance and accurately
to hit the target. They also drew attention to the absence of visible
external damage, scorching and traces of soot remaining after an
"external" blast on the surface of the liner. The video clips shown
five years ago made experts assume there and then that the blast had
indeed been on board. And the missile itself that was launched from
the test site but did not shoot down the plane, it seems, can be
sought on the sea bed – there are relevant estimates of the place
where it fell, very far from point of the plane disaster.

So far as can be judged, the bomb could have been planted in
Bulgaria. The Tu-154 made an unscheduled stopover there, which has
never been reported in the press. In all likelihood, it is a matter
of the airport in Burgas, where some people left the plane and some
luggage was put on board. One other thing is surprising: at the time
of the disaster one of the crew members declared to be on board was
missing.

We hope that in the near future the editorial board will have new
facts at its disposal shedding light on the terrible tragedy. And we
will certainly continue the topic.