Putin’s terror fears as Russian jets were grounded hours before military crash
RUSSIAN aviation chiefs grounded an entire fleet of the country’s newest passenger airliners on Friday just hours before a military jet crashed over the Black Sea killing 92 people.
The plane, as it was in Sharm el-Sheikh, immediately lost speed and fell into spin position, uncontrolled
The flight – carrying 84 passengers and eight crew – vanished “between 5 and 7km after takeoff” over the Black Sea.
It was carrying 68 members of the Alexandrov Ensemble, nine journalists, and eight crew, as well as several servicemen.
It crashed en route to Syria where the band had been going to perform during the New Year concert.
The plane was last detected at about 5.20am local time – 2.20am GMT – over Russian territorial waters.
The Russian Defence Ministry confirmed there were no survivors.
AFP
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Now Russian aviation experts tonight voiced the fear that the Tu-154 was downed by terrorists, despite initial denials from senior Moscow figures that this could be the cause.
Major Andrey Krasnoperov, a top air force instructor pilot, said: “It is too suspicious that the aircraft after take off and during the gain in altitude… disappears from radar screens.
“This means that the engines were running correctly, the fuel was normal.
He feared that the crash of the three-engine Tupolev maybe similar to the Sinai air crash of October 2015 when an Airbus A321-231 bound from from Sharm El Sheikh International Airport, Egypt to Pulkovo Airport, St Petersburg disappeared from the sky.
In this case, Russian officials refused to believe it was terrorism before British intelligence gave them key clues pointing towards this.
“The plane, as it was in Sharm el-Sheikh, immediately lost speed and fell into spin position, uncontrolled,” he said.
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There have been vigils in Russia after the crash that killed a choir and orchestra
“Imagine, the plane starts to rotate heavily. So I think there was destruction of the aircraft, like in Sharm el-Sheikh.”
The debris was scattered over a large distance, he said.
He feared a bomb was planted among the musical instruments carried on this flight.
“Believe me, such a dispersal of fragments happens only when the aircraft is destroyed in the air,” he said.
Military analyst Alexander Golts said: “The connection to the plane was broken instantly, fragments were scattered over ten kilometres – this means we cannot completely exclude the version of an attack.”
Anatoly Tsyganok, head of the Centre for Military Forecasting, worried that the plane was compromised while it was on the ground ahead of the flight.
He feared that the “chemical composition of the fuel was made unusable”.
However, in the immediate aftermath of the flight Viktor Ozerov, head of the Russian senate’s defence committee, said: “I completely rule out the version of a terrorist act.”
And a source close to the investigation said “the collision of the aircraft with a (sea)surface caused a ‘water hammer’.”
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He insisted: “Chkalovsky airfield (from where the aircraft took off in Moscow region) is a well-guarded military facility.
“It is not possible to get there to put a bomb on board.
“In turn, the Sochi airport is dual-use (civil and military) and is protected in emergency mode.
“The penetration of unauthorised persons, or carrying through by any of employees of unauthorised items, is excluded.”