Iran knew immediately missile shot down Ukraine plane, Zelensky says

The Iranian government knew from the outset that
Ukrainian International Airlines (UIA) Flight 752 was shot down by a missile,
despite its claims to the contrary, Ukrainian President Zelensky said on Feb.
2, citing newly revealed leaked records of a conversation between a pilot who
witnessed the crash and an air traffic controller. In their conversation, the
pilot asks the air traffic control tower what is he looking at, specifically
describing it as a series of lights. “Is there a missile?,” he asked. The
controller responds that an explosion occurred, and tries to communicate with
the Ukrainian plane, without receiving a response.

“The release of a new record of communications between
the Tehran air traffic control dispatcher and the pilot of the Iranian airline,
who saw the missile launch and hit the UIA flight, prices that the Iranian side
knew from the very beginning that the plane had been hit by a missile. They had
already known this at the time it was shot down,” Zelensky said in an interview
with the 1+1 television network.

Ukraine received the recording “without access to the
control room and without black boxes,” Zelensky said. Moreover, Ukrainian
investigators faced barriers to reaching the crash site as soon as they landed
in Tehran and faced a difficult atmosphere, he said. When Iran finally offered
compensation of USD 80,000 to each of the victim’s families, Zelensky said he
determined it wasn’t enough and would demand more. Iran has extended an
invitation for Ukrainian investigators to listen to the black box recordings,
but they are afraid to accept it because that could be used as a pretext not to
allow them to take the black boxes with them to Ukraine for their own
investigation. That’s despite Iranian officials promising Zelensky to allow
Ukrainians to take the black boxes with them, he said.

In response to Zelensky’s comments, the Iranian
government said it will no longer cooperate with Ukraine on investigating the
missile attack. “The technical investigation team of the Ukrainian airlines
crash, in a strange move, published the secret audio file of the communications
of a pilot of a plane that was flying at the same time as the Ukrainian plane.
This action by the Ukrainians led to us not sharing any more evidence with
them,” an Iranian official said on Feb. 3, as reported by the UNIAN news
agency.

Zenon Zawada: Zelensky’s
comments seemed to do more harm than benefit, since they apparently prompted
Iran to cut all cooperation. It’s possible Zelensky decided that Iran has
already become uncooperative and he had little to lose in withholding
information from the public. On the whole, his handling of the attack has reflected
his inexperience and uncertainty, costing him his ability to take an
authoritative role in this situation at the international level.

As we’ve said from the beginning, this incident reflects how foreign governments
have come to perceive Ukraine as a weak country that can be pushed around. This
image was formed by Russia with its military occupation of Donbas and illegal
annexation of Crimea in 2014, and enhanced by the scandals involving the
alleged corrupt dealings in Ukraine of both former U.S. Vice President Biden
and U.S. President Trump. The election of a comedian doesn’t help in this
cause, and neither does Zelensky having waited so long – following other world
leaders – in stating what he claims to have known from the beginning, which is
the plane was shot down by a missile.