And yet this is a terrorist attack. And yet this is a terrorist attack. What's wrong with that 154

The version of the terrorist attack on board the Tu-154 in Sochi was refuted even before it was announced - literally in the first hour after reports of the tragedy. Such haste, as recent history shows, usually serves as “proof to the contrary.” This seems to be the case in this case as well. A number of independent experts are considering as a priority the version of a terrorist attack on board a Tu-154 military aircraft, which crashed a few minutes after takeoff. He took off from Sochi's Adler airport and was heading to Syrian Latakia. According to the latest data, there were 93 people in it, among whom were journalists, the Alexandrov Song and Dance Ensemble, and high-ranking military personnel.

The plane was allegedly carrying secret documents. The artists were planning to perform in Aleppo, which was occupied by Syrian troops in December, an employee of the group said. This contradicts information in leading Russian media, according to which the concert was supposed to be held at the Khmeimim airbase.

The Kommersant newspaper cites the opinion of Air Force major, instructor pilot Andrei Krasnoperov, who has little doubt that the airliner exploded in the air. As the main arguments put forward in favor of this assumption, he names two facts that have been established to date: firstly, the scatter of debris is too large, reaching 15 km; secondly, the flight was interrupted too abruptly and quickly after takeoff. “It’s too suspicious that a plane, after taking off while climbing, disappears from the radar screens,” he said, noting that a sharp drop ... happens when something abnormal happened, something exploded, something fell off.”

This disaster reminded him of the death of the civilian airliner A321 in Sharm el-Sheikh, where at first the Russian authorities also in every possible way refused to acknowledge the version of the terrorist attack and only later were forced to agree that there had been an explosion on board. “The situation may be similar to the tragedy in Sharm el-Sheikh; there, too, very little time passed after takeoff,” was the opinion. “The pilot could have calmly transmitted information and turned on the distress signal, but this did not happen. This means that something was so abnormal, sharp in the seventh minute of the flight... I can’t blame the crew, but the equipment doesn’t break down so abruptly,” the pilot continued.

The instructor has no doubt that under such conditions only a deliberately provoked explosion could unexpectedly interrupt the flight of the ship. “If the plane had fallen intact, then there would not have been such scattering of fragments, believe me,” the expert said. - The plane fell apart, simply fell apart, which means it exploded, which means that somewhere someone was given a suitcase, considering that it was a flight to Syria, and musicians from the ensemble were flying, they could have brought something with these musical instruments, someone I could have planted something. Believe me, such scattering of fragments only happens when an airplane is destroyed in the air. It just explodes, that's all. And when the liner just falls, it creates an oil stain, and then parts float up. A plane, if it falls, dives into the water, simply disappears, and is found after some time. And then they even found a person who was already in the coastal zone, damaged by debris. This suggests that the debris fell to the ground in a disorderly manner, which means it exploded in the air.”

In turn, the Open Russia publication quotes the words of aviation expert Vadim Lukashevich (see also), who also drew attention to the large dispersion area of ​​the airliner elements. No technical malfunction can lead to the destruction of an aircraft in the air “... It is noted that the debris is scattered over an area of ​​one and a half kilometers. And this is a lot, because this may be evidence that the plane began to collapse while still in the air... And if in the air, then this is a terrorist attack. Because it is impossible for a plane to break up in the air if a pilot makes a mistake. It needs to be thrown into a tailspin, for example, and that would be very difficult to do. And if this is a technical malfunction, then, anyway, there are no such malfunctions that lead to destruction in the air,” the specialist said. In a conversation with the BBC Russian Service, he confirmed that the version of a terrorist attack should not be ruled out. “...The possibility of an explosion on board cannot be ruled out... If it turns out that the wreckage of the plane lies over a large area, this will mean that the destruction of the Tu-154 began in the air,” Lukashevich said, pointing out that this plane should be considered old and unusable cannot be used.

In a conversation with Novaya Gazeta, he provided a more expanded explanation of his position, which largely corresponds to Krasnoperov’s reasoning. “When the Airbus was blown up over Sinai, the whole world knew that it was a terrorist attack,” explained Lukashevich. - All the intelligence reports reported that we were the only ones playing the fool for two weeks. It’s just that if this is a terrorist attack, you need to understand that this is our answer for Aleppo... When the plane was blown up over Sinai, everyone understood this thing - this is Sharm el-Sheikh, a poor security system, radical groups. Today's context is the murder of our ambassador to Turkey by a state security officer. Today we have already suffered losses in the Ministry of Defense... The most likely ones are piloting error and technical malfunction. But the fact is that in 7 minutes of flight the plane manages to gain a decent altitude. For that height, the debris found in completely different places is too much. This suggests that it began to collapse in the air. No technical malfunction can lead to the destruction of an aircraft in the air. An airplane is a fairly reliable thing. If destruction began to occur in the sky, it means that something extraordinary had already happened there... Why did the landing gear come off? The plane's landing gear could be torn off while it was landing, if the pilots did not have time to remove it. But, you see, seven minutes is a long time, the pilots could not help but remove the landing gear. If the landing gear was not retracted, they would report it. A flock of birds? Then two or three engines should go out at once. But at an altitude of two or three kilometers they have plenty of time to make a decision. A striking example is the “miracle on the Hudson,” the specialist concluded.

In turn, the previously mentioned instructor pilot Krasnoperov, in a conversation with Novaya Gazeta, again emphasized that the disaster reminds him of the tragedy over the Sinai Peninsula. “It’s the same story: a plane disappears from radar, then it turns out that its tail has come off, and after a huge amount of time we are informed about a terrorist attack,” he recalled. - You see, for a pilot to press the distress signal button it takes a split second... But here it’s empty, there’s a loss of communication. Further, the fragments of the plane scatter over a distance of 15 km. This means that it fell apart in the air. The plane is strong, even if it falls into the water, its wing, okay, may fall off, but it will not fall apart. People cannot just be scattered over several kilometers (the correspondent’s passport was found several kilometers from the chassis). ... He landed to refuel... What appeared on the plane after this refueling? It’s not the same here as on civilians. After checking the documents, cars arrive and load additional things. It's much easier to carry something. Our people are all relaxed, no one is thinking about safety at this moment.”

For his part, military expert Alexander Golts was also wary because “the Russian authorities immediately began to deny the version of the terrorist attack,” the BBC reports. At the same time, he admitted that Tu-154 aircraft are obsolete aircraft. A similar opinion was expressed in a conversation with Komsomolskaya Pravda by Alexander Romanov, a former aircraft commander and flight safety specialist. “Due to the fact that the debris is now scattered over a considerable distance, this suggests that the plane may have already disintegrated in the air,” he said. - And it is possible that it was a terrorist attack (the political situation is very difficult now). It is possible to talk about some kind of sabotage. Everyone probably guessed where the plane was flying and could have put something in the luggage or somewhere else. That is, this, it seems to me, is similar to the Egyptian case...”, the specialist noted.

According to him, the key moment of the event was related to the refueling of the plane in Sochi. “Most likely, service personnel arrived, there was some kind of water delivery, of course, there were gas stations, there were technical services. Because all technical regulations had to be passed, everything technical had to be done by ground services. Therefore, quite a lot of people approached the plane,” he suggested, explaining that at that moment, a mine was probably planted in the luggage compartment. At the same time, he explained that under other circumstances the crew would have had the opportunity to send a distress signal, which was not done in this case. “In 7 minutes, the plane could climb about 3-4 thousand meters, and from there the crew had all the opportunities to convey, if there had not been some unexpected, sudden situation, when everything happened almost instantly, the crew was deprived of the opportunity to convey the difficulties that arose on board. Therefore, most likely, there was some kind of terrorist attack here,” the expert concluded.

The Department of Information and Mass Communications of the Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed that the crashed Tu-154 plane only recently, in the fall of this year, underwent scheduled maintenance, and was flown by an experienced pilot, Interfax reports. For its part, a source in the emergency services also ruled out the version of pilot error and called the weather conditions in the area of ​​the crash “favorable.” “The version of pilot error is also unlikely, because they had extensive experience in flying aircraft of this type and significant flight hours. As for the weather conditions in the crash area, they were favorable for the flight,” the source said. Thus, various officials collectively have effectively ruled out the possibility of a terrorist attack. However, the authorities are in no hurry to designate this version even as one of the possible ones, but instead consider a technical malfunction as the cause of the plane’s crash.

However, Fontanka reports that the security forces are working on a version of the terrorist attack. According to her, the FSB is checking all persons involved in servicing the Tu-154 aircraft. A source in the Ministry of Defense said that the Tu-154 served as a so-called “mail carrier”, transporting a large volume of military papers, which could include secret dispatches. It should be noted that among the passengers of the crashed plane - in addition to the musicians - there were also high-ranking Russian military personnel, including Lieutenant General Valery Khalilov. In total, 8 military personnel died in the disaster - one lieutenant general, four colonels, a lieutenant colonel, a major and a captain. It is known that on board the Tu-154 there was a film crew from the Zvezda and NTV channels, reporters from Channel One, as well as a former REN TV journalist. The head of the Fair Aid charity foundation, Elizaveta Glinka, known as Doctor Lisa, who was flying to the Khmeimim airbase to take medicine to the Latakia University Hospital, also died in the crash.

According to Life, the artists of the Alexandrov Song and Dance Ensemble were prohibited from talking to the press. Three artists from different groups of the ensemble reported this to Life. Members of the musical group are informed by telephone that interviews are prohibited without prior approval from the administration. The Russian Ministry of Defense Tu-154 plane disappeared from radar on Sunday morning two minutes after taking off from Sochi. The liner fell in the Black Sea near the Sochi coast. A criminal case has been opened regarding the crash of the Tu-154. The main version of the crash is a technical malfunction. A search and rescue operation is currently underway in the area of ​​the disaster. According to the latest official data from the Russian Ministry of Defense, rescuers found and raised the bodies of 12 dead to the surface.

Two of the planes that crashed last week were blown up. On Friday, Russian authorities finally acknowledged this officially. The most likely version of the terrorist attacks is “Chechen”; the alleged perpetrators are two female suicide bombers. Although one of the numerous organizations of the Al-Qaeda network, the Islambuli Brigades, has already claimed responsibility for the explosions.

On the night of August 25, two Russian airliners crashed with an interval of half an hour, taking off from Moscow Domodedovo airport. A Tu-154 of Sibir Airlines, flying to Sochi, crashed in the Rostov region, and a Tu-134 of Volga-Aviaexpress Airlines, flying to Volgograd, crashed near Tula. At first, airlines and intelligence agencies announced 89 dead, then one more person was added to the list of dead.

After it turned out on Thursday that the flight recorders (black boxes) on both Tu planes failed while still in the air, which can only be explained by the rapid destruction of the aircraft, aviation engineering experts interviewed by Vedomosti said that the airliners were blown up.

On Friday, the version of the terrorist attack on board the Tu-154 was finally recognized as official. “When examining the wreckage of the Tu-154 aircraft, traces of an explosive substance were found. Preliminary analysis showed that it was hexogen,” Sergei Ignatchenko, head of the FSB Central Operations Center, told Interfax. On Saturday, he made a similar statement regarding the study of the Tu-134 wreckage.

A source in the FSB explains that with the existing inspection system at airports, an explosive device could get onto the plane through luggage. “It was possible to carry it in hand luggage, because the explosive itself looks like a bar of soap,” says the officer. “And during the flight, it was enough to stick two wires, a battery and a detonator into it, which no one would pay attention to during inspection.” According to the source, “half a kilogram of modern plastic explosives would be enough for an explosion to cause a plane to fall apart in the air.” Hexogen could have been added by terrorists “to enhance the effect of the explosion.”

In the passenger lists, the FSB found women with Chechen surnames - Nagaeva was flying on a Tu-134, and Dzhebirkhanova was flying on a Tu-154. Both bought their flight tickets at the very last moment, both of their bodies were torn to pieces (i.e. bombs exploded in close proximity to them), and finally, neither of them received any inquiries from relatives. Information about these women is currently being collected.

Minister Igor Levitin, who heads the disaster investigation commission, said on Friday that during the May inspection at Domodedovo airport, deficiencies were found in the security system. An expert familiar with the contents of the inspection report told Vedomosti that the complaints were caused, among other things, by poor settings of introscopes and metal detectors, as well as the absence of metal detector frames and introscopes at the entrance to the airport building.

So far, the Prosecutor General’s Office is investigating two criminal cases under the article “crime against traffic safety and operation of transport.” “Based on all the collected data, the prosecutor’s office will decide on the possibility of reclassifying criminal cases under the article “terrorism,” Ignatchenko told Interfax. Representatives of the Prosecutor General’s Office itself do not rule out merging the cases into one.

There was also an international trace in the case. On Friday, Reuters, citing a little-known Arabic-language website, reported that the Islamist group Islambouli Brigades claimed responsibility for the explosion of both planes. “Our mujahideen [...] were able to successfully capture two Russian aircraft,” the agency quotes a statement in Arabic. President of the Institute for Israel and Middle East Studies Yevgeny Satanovsky says that the Islambuli Brigades are a well-known terrorist structure, a “daughter” of Al-Qaeda. But, he says, there are no guarantees that the appeal of this particular organization is actually posted on the Internet and that the Islambuli Brigades themselves are not bluffing, attributing the terrorist attack that has already occurred to themselves.

The terrorist organization is named after the Egyptian officer Khaled Islambouli, who organized the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981. Al-Qaeda's Islambouli Brigades have already claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist attacks, including an assassination attempt on a candidate for prime minister . Pakistan.

On Saturday, Levitin signed an order obliging airlines to equip aircraft with emergency radio beacons of the COSPAS-SARSAT system. From January 1, the operation of ships without radio beacons in the Russian sky will be prohibited. According to Levitin's press secretary Svetlana Kryshtanovskaya, emergency radio beacons should make it easier to find the remains of aircraft after a crash. Currently, only foreign-made aircraft are equipped with such systems. As Kryshtanovskaya says, one set costs $40,000. In total, according to the Financial Leasing Company, about 1,800 aircraft are operated in Russia. Thus, the new measure will cost the industry approximately $70 million.

No, no, there has not yet been any official confirmation on this matter, but the word “terrorist attack” itself is already firmly rooted in the minds of most people - it seems that the entire world community, and Russian citizens in the first place, are carefully preparing for this “news” ...

More than two hundred “fragments of biological materials” have already been delivered to the morgues of St. Petersburg, from which experts have “compiled” almost one hundred and fifty bodies.

The nature of the damage to the bodies can say a lot. Experts have already conditionally divided the bodies of all passengers into two groups:

The first group included those who died in the area where the main part of the aircraft fuselage fell. All passengers sitting in the front part of the plane received blunt injuries to the chest and abdomen and pelvis, multiple fractures of the upper and lower extremities and ruptures of internal organs. Their deaths were due to acute blood loss, shock and open head injuries.

In the second group, forensic experts included passengers whose remains were located nearby and among the wreckage of the tail section of the plane. The nature of their injuries differs markedly from the first group - most of the dead were diagnosed with blast injuries with multiple burns of more than 90% of soft tissues.

According to experts, such damage could have occurred after the explosion of fuel tanks or the activation of an explosive device. True, a fair question arises: where could fuel tanks end up in the tail of the plane? After all, they are located in the wings of the aircraft and parts of the fuselage at the place where they are attached. In the event of a fuel fire, the first to suffer burns were the passengers in the front and middle parts of the aircraft cabin...

Despite the fact that experts from Cairo said that they found no traces of explosives at the crash site of the Russian plane, American experts are confident that the most likely cause of the disaster is an explosive device that was brought on board.

Personally, I completely agree with the conclusions of the Americans. As you well understand, it is very difficult to carry a large amount of explosives on board an airplane, even at Cairo airport. Therefore, most likely, a small amount of explosives was carried on board, which could cause catastrophic damage to such a large aircraft in only one place - in the tail section, where all the control lines of the aircraft converge.

There was no reason to detonate a small amount of explosives in the front or middle parts of the fuselage, since even at such a high altitude (9 thousand meters) the body of a powerful airbus could withstand the force of the explosion...

True, there is also information about the discovery of some mysterious objects at the site of the plane crash that are not related to it. In my opinion, this is either just a duck, or these objects could have accidentally ended up at the site of the plane crash. The likelihood that the plane was shot down due to external influence is extremely low, although it should not be ruled out either - in the world, it is not only Ukrainian air defense personnel who have low qualifications...

I think that confirmation of the version of the terrorist attack is a matter of the very near future...

The “Orthodox Church” of Ukraine (OCU) does not have autocephaly and is dependent on the Patriarchate of Constantinople - this statement from the lips of the self-proclaimed “patriarch”, the head of the schismatic Kyiv Patriarchate, actually reflects the reality that members of the newly organized OCU persistently deny demonstrating and proud of their imaginary independence. The “only” difference is that the UOC-MP is the canonical Church, and the OCU is an organization created by schismatics. “The Tomos makes the church almost as dependent on Constantinople as the one in which the UOC (MP) is located on Moscow,” Filaret said. At the same time, adding that he will not comply with the instructions specified in the Tomos regarding the transfer of foreign parishes of the former UOC-KP to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, he is not going to give up the ban on cooking myrrh and does not intend to consult with the Ecumenical Patriarchate if controversial situations arise.

Today in Russia we celebrate the Day of Slavic Literature and Culture, established on the day of remembrance of Saints Methodius and Cyril, Equal-to-the-Apostles, Slovenian teachers. The director of the Memorial Museum-Apartment of St. John of Kronstadt in Kronstadt, a researcher at the F. M. Dostoevsky Museum, and the rector of the Peter and Paul Church in the village reflects in an interview with the Russian People's Line about the significance of this holiday. Somino Archpriest Gennady Belovolov: The Day of Slavic Literature and Culture is one of the most necessary and pressing holidays for Russia, for our spiritual identity and our inner sense of self. This is our civilizational holiday. In short, this is a holiday of our Slavic civilization. This holiday scales our culture over the span of millennia, from the 9th century, when the Slavic alphabet was created, to the present day, from Cyril and Methodius to Sergei Bekhteev and Nikolai Rubtsov. It is impossible to set a larger scale of our cultural existence.

The calls of patriots and the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, who warned about the danger of the total electronic-digital system being built before our eyes, have finally been heard. Yesterday, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin announced the creation of a deputy working group on the protection of personal data of Russians, and Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy publicly defeated the idea of ​​the bill hanging over Russia on the digital profile of a citizen and the entire system of end-to-end identification of citizens. The significance of this event is difficult to overestimate: for the first time at this level, the authorities openly listened to our arguments on the issue of introducing “digital”, and this happened against the backdrop of a behind-the-scenes struggle in the camp of the digitalizers themselves and the actual failure of the “Digital Economy” project recorded at a meeting with the president on national projects.

Air Force Major, instructor pilot Andrei Krasnoperov in an interview with Kommersant about the crashed Tu-154 of the Ministry of Defense:

Now they have clarified that this happened in the seventh minute, while gaining altitude or during a turn, apparently over the Black Sea.

This means that the engines were working properly and the fuel was normal. If this happened on takeoff, fuel could be the cause. The situation may be similar to the tragedy in Sharm el-Sheikh; there, too, very little time passed after takeoff.

Do you mean a version of a terrorist attack?

Certainly. What is very strange is that a plane crashes on takeoff very rarely, especially of this class. The Tu-154 has three engines and is very reliable. I myself flew on them as a passenger very often.

Why don't you look into the plane's malfunction? After all, the Tu-154 is far from a new aircraft.

Yes, but they are very reliable. I can look at the design of the aircraft from the point of view of the pilot, and believe me, what is connected with the control of the aircraft, there is such a reliable control system, not like electronics now, but there are cable backup systems, including aircraft control systems, that is, if one system fails , another one enters. Considering the experience of the pilots who now fly these planes, this situation is still very strange to me, that it was only the seventh minute after takeoff. I understand that the plane took off from our airfield, and it was monitored by an electronic surveillance system, so it could not have been that someone was flying up to it, it could have crashed into something.

Initially it was reported that the signal from the radar screens simply disappeared, but the plane did not send any distress signals.

This suggests that the plane, as in Sharm el-Sheikh, instantly lost speed and simply fell into a spin position, that is, uncontrollable. In this case, the pilot simply, with such an overload, which happens in this case, not only could not report to the dispatcher, but was also unable to turn on the distress signal. Just imagine, the liner just starts to spin violently. Therefore, I think the plane was destroyed, as was the case in Sharm el-Sheikh, where its speed was first 780 km/h and then suddenly became 170 km/h, and a loss of altitude of 1000 m.

Now we need to look at the radars, exactly how the speed dropped. That is, the plane could glide and land on the water. Recently there was an incident with a Tu-154, when 37 people were saved. The pilots were then able to land the plane on an unfamiliar field in a strong wind, in a heavy snowstorm, and they saved almost all the people.

In this situation, there were simple weather conditions; if something had happened to the plane, to the engine, it would have simply turned around and started gliding towards the airfield and landed in the coastal zone. Even if the plane would have collapsed, the pilots, the crew, and the passengers would have been alive, you know? And then there is a sharp drop, this happens when something abnormal happens, something explodes, something falls off. As a rule, the tail of these planes can only fall off. In all other cases, the pilot could easily transmit information and turn on the distress signal, but this did not happen. This means that something was abnormal and abrupt in the seventh minute of the flight. So, I can’t blame the crew, and the equipment doesn’t break down so suddenly.

The scattering of fragments at such a speed, and its speed in the build-up is about 600-700 km/h, already there it goes over, at such a distance it may well be. But if the plane had fallen intact, then there would not have been such scattering of fragments, believe me. The plane fell apart, simply fell apart, which means it exploded, which means that somewhere someone was given a suitcase, considering that it was a flight to Syria, and musicians from the ensemble were flying, they could have brought something with these musical instruments, someone... I could have planted it. Believe me, such scattering of fragments only happens when an airplane is destroyed in the air. It just explodes, that's all. And when the liner just falls, it creates an oil stain, and then parts float up. A plane, if it falls, dives into the water, simply disappears, and is found after some time. And then they even found a person who was already in the coastal zone, damaged by debris. This suggests that the debris fell to the ground in a disorderly manner, which means it exploded in the air.