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| Europe |
| Lithuania investigating Russian fighter crash |
| 2005-09-17 |
| VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) - Lithuania on Friday refused Moscow's requests to hand over a Russian pilot whose fighter jet crashed in the NATO member's territory after violating its airspace, saying it must first complete an investigation. NATO investigators also would study the Su-27 fighter-bomber's flight recorder, or "black box," to determine what caused the crash, Defense Minister Gediminas Kirkilas. "We will not hand the pilot and the black box of the crashed plane over to Moscow until the investigation is completed," Kirkilas said. The plane, en route from St. Petersburg to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, crashed Thursday near the village of Ploksciai, 120 miles northwest of Vilnius. The pilot, Maj. Valery Troyanov, ejected without injury, officials said. After questioning Troyanov for six hours, Prosecutor Mindaugas Duda said the pilot no longer was a witness but a suspect, and Lithuania had opened a case against him on suspicion of "violating international flight regulations." He did not say why Tryanov's status had been changed. Troyanov's jet flew in a convoy with other Russian aircraft given permission to fly through an agreed "corridor" over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Lithuanian officials said. The other aircraft reached Kaliningrad safely. Maj. Gen. Valdas Tutkus, commander of the Lithuania's armed forces, said he believed the pilot did not intentionally violate Lithuanian airspace and that the crash was likely caused by a technical problem. "We knew its precise route and did not feel it posed any threat," Tutkus told the Baltic News Agency, BNS. He said Troyanov sent an SOS signal before crashing that was picked up by air force traffic controllers in neighboring Belarus, who contacted Lithuanian officials on a special hot line. Kirkilas said Lithuania lacked experts who could examine the black box and would turn to its NATO allies for help. The alliance, which has four F-4 fighters stationed at an air base in Lithuania, scrambled two of its fighters to intercept the Russian plane. Maj. Karl Heinz Smuda, a spokesman for the German NATO contingent currently policing Baltic skies, praised the response time. "According to regulations, we have 15 minutes to fly to the conflict zone," Smuda said. "Our pilots did it in eight minutes, and we are proud of it. When they arrived, the Russian pilot had already ejected and the fighter was nose-diving to the ground." The Russian Defense Ministry apologized for the crash and promised to pay for any damage it caused. The incident was the latest in a series of recent airspace violations by Russian planes in the region. In May, Finland complained that Russian military aircraft had repeatedly violated its airspace over a period of several months. The violations took place over the Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea as the jets flew to and from Kaliningrad. Similar alleged violations have been reported in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In November, Estonia filed a complaint with Moscow but said none was serious enough to merit intervention by the four NATO fighters that patrol the airspace. |
| Posted by:Steve White |