Siberia Airlines Flight 1812
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Siberia Airlines (Russian: Aviakompaniya Sibir') Flight 1812 crashed over the Black Sea on October 4, 2001, en route from Tel Aviv (Israel) to Novosibirsk (Russia). The plane, a Soviet-made Tupolev-154, carried an estimated 66 passengers (mostly Jewish-Russian immigrants to Israel) and 12 crew members. No one on board survived.
Russian ground control center in Sochi suddenly lost contact with the airliner. Soon, the pilot of an Armenian plane crossing the sea nearby reported a "flash" on the horizon.
In the post-September 11 situation, the crash was initially thought to be due to terrorism.
It was later declared that the plane was accidentally brought down by a stray anti-aircraft missile. It was supposedly fired by the Ukrainian Air Defense Force during the shooting exercise held that day on Cape Chuluk shooting range, on the south Crimean coast. The missile, part of the obsolete Soviet-made S-200 air-defence system, was initially reported to be launched seawards and to have successfully self-destructed. Ukraine's Minister of Defense and other higher commanders had been following the launch on site by radar.
The following investigation conducted by Russian air safety officials discovered that the plane's debris bore damage similar to that caused by the distinctive spherical shrapnel produced by the S-200. Also the timing of both the launch and the crash were reported matching.
Despite that, the Ukrainian military at first insisted that the launch was completed according to the exercise plan, supported by video shot from the command post. But later the government of Ukraine officially recognized its military's fault in the accident and started negotiating compensation payments for victims' relatives.
On November 20, 2003, the compensation agreement was signed between the governments of Ukraine and Israel. It was later ratified by the relatives of the victims who agreed to the conditions. In addition to compensation issues, the agreement has stated that "Ukraine is not legally responsible for the accident that occurred to the plane and free of any obligations regarding it". Commenting on the agreement, Gen. Oleksandr Kuz'muk, the ex-Minister of Defense sacked after the accident, told media that "the payments were a humane action, not the admittance of guilt".
Some Russian relatives of the crash victims refused to accept the compensation conditions offered by Ukraine. They brought a civil suit against the Ukrainian government to Pechers'ky local court in Kiev. During the court hearings, the government representatives stated that the airplane "could not be brought down by a Ukrainian missile" according to the radar data. They also questioned the conclusions of the Russian-conducted investigation, calling them "mathematically modeled, but not proven by evidence". They argued that the Soviet-made Identification friend or foe system of the missile in question would have prevented it from striking the Soviet-made airliner. The lawyer representing the plaintiffs argued in media that the fault of the Ukrainian government was effectively proven by the fact that it negotiated the compensations for Israeli relatives of the victims.
On June 21, 2004, the spokesperson of Ukraine's General Prosecution Office stated that none of the 11 forensic examinations carried out so far have proven the fact of hitting the Tupolev-154 by a Ukrainian missile so the criminal investigation continued.
