Today marks second anniversary of UIA plane downing in Tehran

Two years ago, a Ukraine International Airlines flight 572 Tehran-Kyiv was shot down from the skies over Tehran.

On January 8, 2020, after taking off from Tehran airport, a Boeing 737-800NG passenger jet was brought down by two surface-to-air missiles, Ukrinform recalls.

All 176 people on board died in the crash, including 167 passengers and nine crew members. Among the victims are citizens of seven countries, including 11 Ukrainians (nine crew and two passengers).

Iranian authorities initially claimed the crash was caused by a technical failure of the Boeing 737-800NG, which caused a fire in the jet’s engine compartment. In turn, the UIA management rejected the possibility of pilot error and called the minimum probability of technical failure of the aircraft. It was not until January 11 that the Iranian leadership acknowledged that PS752 had been mistakenly shot down by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

It later became known that the UIA plane was shot down by two Tor-M1 anti-aircraft missiles, which Iran had received from Russia. This fact, as well as the fact that Tehran refused to hand over "black boxes" to Kyiv, raised doubts among some experts as to whether the Ukrainian plane was actually shot down by accident. Initially, Iran stated that it was not possible to decipher the information from the "black boxes" of the downed UIA plane, but they did not intend to hand it to other governments. However, on July 18, Iran sent "black boxes" to Paris. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine later reported that the PS752 "black boxes" had been successfully deciphered and that the transcript confirmed the fact of illegal interference in the flight.

Negotiations on compensation for Iran's downing of the PS752 have been underway since late July. Finally, on December 30, the Iranian government decided to pay $150,000 in compensation to each family of those killed in the crash.

In addition, Iran submitted to Ukraine the final technical report on the UIA passenger plane crash near Tehran.

Photo: AA

im