Zelensky’s top aide: It’s not proven that Iran shot down plane unintentionally

The Ukrainian government is not excluding the possibility that Iran shot down a Ukrainian plane intentionally.

According to Andriy Yermak, a top aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky, some Ukrainian experts remain in Iran to investigate the Jan. 8 downing of Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) flight PS752, which killed all 176 people on board.

The main question for them to answer is whether the downing was indeed unintentional, as Iran claims, Yermak told Ukrainian media.

“Even though Iran acknowledged it shot down (the plane) and claimed that it happened as a result of a tragic mistake, we still have to establish whether this was a mistake or intentional,” wrote Yermak in a Jan. 14 comment to the Ukrainska Pravda news outlet. He then repeated it in an interview with Novoe Vremya magazine.

Yermak was reluctant to comment further, saying he didn’t want his comments to harm the work of the Ukrainian experts who remain on the ground in Iran.

UIA flight PS752 was shot down on Jan. 8, minutes after it took off from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport bound for Kyiv. On Jan. 11, the Iranian government acknowledged it had shot down the plane, saying an operator of the missile launcher mistook it for a cruise missile and independently decided to shoot at it after failing to reach his supervisors.

In a statement after Iran admitted guilt, Zelensky didn’t indicate that Ukraine doubted the Iranian authorities’ explanation.

Yermak also addressed Zelensky’s apparent slow reaction to the situation. On Jan. 9, when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the shocking announcement that, according to intelligence sources, the plane was shot down by an Iranian missile, it took Zelensky more than 10 hours to publically react. On Jan. 10, he called on other nations to share information with Ukraine and said that the “missile version wasn’t yet confirmed.”

Yermak defended the president’s actions.

“This situation needed to be treated very delicately,” he told Novoe Vremya on Jan. 14.

Critics also said that Zelensky was too slow in returning to Ukraine from his private trip to Oman after the Ukrainian plane was shot down.

When the tragedy happened, the country’s leadership was on Christmas break. Zelensky was spending time with his family in Oman, while Ivan Bakanov, head of Ukraine’s Security Service, took his family skiing to the French resort town of Maribel.

According to Yermak, who went to Oman with Zelensky, the president found out about the crash when the two of them were having breakfast on Jan. 8. Bakanov called Zelensky from France to tell him about the tragedy.

Upon learning about it, Zelensky had phone conversations with Oleksandr Danylov, the secretary of Ukraine’s Security and Defense Council, and with Ukraine’s ambassador to Iran, Yermak told Novoe Vremya.

Zelensky returned to Ukraine in the early hours of Jan. 9 — 22 hours after the crash — on a private jet. He went straight to the Presidential Office and held a meeting with his aides and top officials about the situation. Bakanov wasn’t present – the security service chief hadn’t yet returned from France.

Yermak said that the president returned to Ukraine as soon as possible, claiming that he headed home once the airspace was opened between Oman and Ukraine for private jets.

However, other planes were able to fly out of Oman earlier that day.

According to Mykhailo Tkach, a journalist at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Schemes investigation team, a plane frequently used by Viktor Medvedchuk, a controversial pro-Russian Ukrainian politician, left the Muscat airport in Oman on the morning of Jan. 8, hours after the Ukrainian plane was downed in Iran. Medvedchuk later told RFE/RL that the plane took the family of his daughter to Moscow after a vacation in Oman.

Zelensky left from the same airport in the evening of the same day.

According to Tkach, the jet that Zelensky used to return to Ukraine had been parked in the Muscat airport since Jan. 7, meaning that the delay wasn’t caused by Zelensky having to wait for the plane to pick him up.

Zelensky’s trip to Oman was controversial from the start. Zelensky was first spotted in Oman on Jan. 5. On the same day, the president’s office said that Zelensky was in Oman on an official state visit, yet added that the president paid for the trip out of his pocket. Later, Yermak said the visit was a private trip that included some official meetings.

The president’s office published a photo of Zelensky meeting Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, Oman’s foreign minister. According to the office, Zelensky and Abdullah talked about improving trade between the two countries.

Oman’s share in Ukraine’s total imports was 0.012% in 2018.