In air crash, Russians discount terror attack
SOCHI, Russia — The Kremlin on Monday played down the possibility that a terror attack might have downed a Syria-bound Russian plane, killing all 92 people on board, as the nation observed a day of mourning for the victims, including most members of a world famous military choir.
President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that an attack isn’t a likely scenario. Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov, who oversaw the rescue efforts, said investigators were looking into a possible technical fault or pilot error as the most likely reasons behind the crash.
Sokolov said on television that the main theories for the crash “do not include the idea of a terrorist act.”
“We are working on the assumption that the reasons for the catastrophe could have been technical or pilot error,” he said.
At the same time, officials emphasized that the plane should have been technically sound because it underwent repairs and resumed service in December 2014, and that the pilot was experienced and had 1,900 hours of flying time at the control of Tu-154s.
“The plane was technically fit,” Lt. Gen. Viktor Bondarev, commander of the Russian air force, said at an early-morning
news conference at the Sochi airport. “The pilot was well prepared.”
Criminal investigators as well as a Defense Ministry committee are in charge of determining the cause of the crash.
The Tu-154, owned by the Defense Ministry, crashed into the Black Sea early Sunday, two minutes after taking off in good weather from Sochi. The plane was carrying members of the Alexandrov Ensemble, often referred to as the Red Army Choir, to a New Year’s concert at a Russian military base in Syria.
About 3,500 people, 43 ships and 182 divers were sweeping a vast crash scene for bodies of victims and debris, and dozens of drones and several submersibles also were involved in the search. Rescue teams had recovered 11 bodies and numerous body fragments, which were flown to Moscow for identification.
Divers located parts of the plane’s fuselage and other fragments, but the search for the jet’s flight recorders will likely prove challenging, officials said, as they lack underwater locator beacons for easy spotting common in more modern planes.
The most likely area where the plane plunged into the water moments after taking off from the southwestern resort city of Sochi has been identified, Bondarev said at the news conference.
Bondarev said he did not expect the plane’s fin, where the flight recorders are situated, to be as damaged as the fuselage, raising hopes that the recorders might be intact. Several chunks of the fuselage were located Monday on the seabed about a mile offshore, initially by sonar and then by divers, the ministry of emergency situations announced.
THE CREW’S SILENCE
Throughout the day, top-ranking legislators and Defense Ministry officials assured the public that a terrorist could never have made it onto the heavily guarded airfield outside Moscow where the jet first took off. Later, officials revealed that the plane had been scheduled to refuel at the military base in Mozdok, Russia, but had been rerouted to Sochi because of inclement weather. The Interfax news agency quoted a military source as saying the airport in Sochi, site of the 2014 Olympics, also has increased security.
But some aviation experts noted that the crew’s failure to communicate any technical problem and the large area over which fragments of the plane were scattered point to a possible explosion on board, adding that the crew would have reported any technical glitch.
“Possible malfunctions … certainly wouldn’t have prevented the crew from reporting them,” Vitaly Andreyev, a former senior Russian air traffic controller, told RIA Novosti, adding that an “external impact” was the most likely reason.
Russia’s main domestic security and counterterrorism agency, the FSB, said it has found “no indications or facts pointing at the possibility of a terror attack or an act of sabotage on board the plane.”
The plane departed from the Chkalovsky military airport just outside Moscow and stopped in Sochi for refueling early Sunday. The FSB said border guards and military servicemen were protecting the plane as it sat on the tarmac in Sochi, and the chief pilot along with the flight engineer personally monitored the refueling. The agency said a border guard officer and a customs official were the only ones to briefly come on board in Sochi.
Some Russian media pointed to lax security at Chkalovsky outside Moscow where the plane was based, saying that it’s quite porous compared to civilian airports.
Alexander Gusak, a former chief of the FSB special forces unit, also hinted at security breaches at Chkalovsky and said that even the much more secure Sochi airport could be vulnerable.
“It’s possible to penetrate any facility. It depends on your skills,” Gusak told Dozhd TV.
Russian planes have been brought down previously in terror attacks.
In October 2015, a Russian passenger plane was brought down by a bomb over Egypt, killing all 224 people aboard. Officials said the explosive device was planted in the plane’s luggage compartment. A local affiliate of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility.
In August 2004, two Russian planes were blown up on the same day by suicide bombers, killing 89 people. A Chechen warlord claimed responsibility for the twin attacks, which were made possible by lax security at a Moscow airport.
While ruling out an attack in Sunday’s crash, the FSB said investigators are looking into bad fuel, pilot error, alien objects stuck in the engines or equipment failure.
John Goglia, a former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board member and aviation safety expert, argued that while pilot error or bad fuel “would be high on my list,” they wouldn’t have prevented the pilot from alerting traffic controllers to the situation. He also noted that the Tu-154 has been “a pretty reliable platform.”
The Tu-154 is a Soviet-built three-engine airliner designed in the late 1960s. The plane that crashed Sunday was built in 1983.
While the Tu-154 is no longer used by Russian airlines because it’s too noisy and fuel-hungry, the Russian military has continued to operate it. The plane has been popular with crews who appreciate its maneuverability and ruggedness.
VICTIMS MOURNED
In Moscow, famous performers and ordinary citizens, some of them in tears, dropped flowers at the entrance to the headquarters of the Alexandrov Ensemble. Another mountain of red carnations and candles piled up outside the Ostankino television center as a tribute to nine journalists who were accompanying the choir to the Khmeimim Air Base in Syria.
Flags were at half-staff across Russia on Monday, nationwide television stations canceled their entertainment programs and the Cabinet began its session with a moment of silence as part of the nationwide mourning.
The plane was carrying 68 performers and staff members of the ensemble, including an army choir and orchestra loved for its renditions of classical Russian songs and folk tunes.
Vadim Ananyev, a soloist who stayed home with his family, said he was devastated.
“I have lost my friends and colleagues, all killed, all five soloists,” Ananyev said. “I have known these people for 30 years. I know their wives and children. I feel terrible for the children and for all that I have lost.”
Ananyev said he had received condolences from all over Russia and from abroad.
“We were loved all over the world, never mind the political situation,” he said.
A memorial service was conducted at a small chapel inside the Sochi terminal, with the airport’s employees and passers-by carrying flowers and candles.
At a makeshift memorial heaped with flowers near Sochi’s old seaport, Oganes Melikyan recalled his old army friend, Valery Khalilov, who was the artistic director of the ensemble.
“He was extraordinarily intelligent with a great sense of humor,” Melikyan, a 58-yearold construction worker, said as he held photographs of the orchestra from his own days in the army.
“Kind and good are not enough to describe him,” said the army veteran, adding that news of the death hit him “like a ton of bricks fell on my head.”
Several couples were ensnared in the disaster, according to various Russian news reports. Dmitri Papkin, 35, a choir singer, was on an earlier plane that had already arrived in Syria. His wife, Maria Klokotkova, 34, believed to be in the dance troupe, died on the second flight.
Mikhail Vasin, 25, a basso profundo in the choir, proposed to Ralina Gilmanova, a 22-year-old ballerina, last New Year’s Eve. She accepted, and the couple were planning to get married early in 2017. Both were aboard the flight that crashed.
In Rome, Pope Francis led thousands of faithful in silent prayer for the plane crash victims and noted that the Russian army choir had performed in 2004 at the Vatican.
Information for this article was contributed by Vladimir Isachenkov, Veronika Silchenko, Nataliya Vasilyeva, Kate de Pury and Joan Lowy of The Associated Press; by David Filipov of The Washington
Post; and by Ivan Nechepurenko, Neil MacFarquhar and Oleg Matsnev of The New York Times.