PHOTO: A memorial in Belarus for those killed in Sunday’s crash of a Russian military jet (Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)
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UPDATE 1215 GMT: Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said there are no facts indicating that an attack downed the military jet.
“We have got no signs or facts indicating that an act of terrorism or sabotage was committed onboard,” the FSB said.
The service said investigations continue along four main lines of inquiry: “a foreign object, substandard fuel that caused the loss of thrust on and eventually stopped the engines, the pilot’s mistake and the plane’s technical failure.”
ORIGINAL ENTRY: A Russian military plane crashed en route to Syria on Sunday, killing all 84 passengers and eight crew.
The passengers included about 60 singers, dancers, and orchestra members of the Russian military choir, the Alexandrov Ensemble. Troops and nine Russian State journalists were also on board, as was Elizaveta Glinka, a renowned doctor and member of Putin’s advisory human rights council,
The TU-154 Tupolev crashed into the Black Sea after disappearing from radar screens, about 5:25 a.m., two minutes after taking off from Sochi in southern Russia. It was heading to Russia’s main airbase, near Latakia in western Syria.
Moscow said the Ensemble — one of two orchestras that can call itself the Red Army Choir — was going to serenade Russian troops on New Year’s Eve. However, several independent Russian outlets said that the choir was going to participate in celebrations of last week’s reoccupation of all of Aleppo city by pro-Assad forces.
A Russian orchestra performed amid the Roman ruins of Palmyra in May, weeks after the Assad regime declared the “liberation” of the historic city from the Islamic State. ISIS regained Palmyra earlier this month, as pro-Assad forces concentrated on advancing in opposition areas of Aleppo.
Photo: Sergei Chirikov/EPA
Russia’s RIA news agency, citing a “security source”, said preliminary information indicated that the plane had crashed because of a technical malfunction or a pilot error. Another source told Russian agencies that the possibility of an attack had been ruled out.
“It is premature to say anything about the causes of this tragedy,” Transportation Minister Maxim Sokolov told reporters.
The crash was the second for the Russian military within a week. On December 19, a jet crashed in Siberia with 39 people on board, as it tried to make an emergency landing near a military base. Nobody was killed, but 32 people were airlifted to hospital.
Rebel Leaders Describe Talks in Ankara Over Regime Proposal
Rebel leaders have described last week’s political talks with the Assad regime, brokered in Ankara, for a political resolution.
Major Jamil al-Saleh, a commander of the Jaish al-Izza faction, said that regime officials had offered a truce that covered some areas and some rebel groups. According to Saleh, the rebels replied that any truce must include all of the country and all factions, including access to aid for besieged areas and negotiations “to end the rule of the criminals.
The commander said Turkey supported the rebel position.
Saleh’s account was echoed by Lieutenant Colonel Abu Bakr, a commander of Jaysh al-Mujahideen:
They wanted a truce that excludes certain regions and factions. Our answer was clear: no matter how great the differences, we will not allow the enemies to [widen] the cracks of those differences to drive a wedge between regions and groups because our fate, pain, and hope is one,
Abu Bakr also said Turkis officials, “despite all the pressure, are standing with the just cause of our people and the revolution. They didn’t betray nor sell us and they did what they can.”
