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Su-27 crash in Lithuania : Russia provided Lithuania with “the wrong” data about fighter

Russia “intentionally” provided the “wrong” data about crashed in Lithuania two weeks ago Su-27 fighter. This was told by Gediminas Kirkilas, Lithuanian secretary of defense in Thursday’s interview to ‘Ziniu radijas’ radio broadcasting company.

By his opinion, Russian side tried to ‘lower down investigation results’.

“Russia doesn’t like the fact, that we are doing ivestigation very sequentially, accordingly to the laws and trying not to make politics from it - and Russia doesn’t accept it” - said secretary of defense Kirkilas.

“Obviously it is have been done to lower down the results and findings of investigation, when it will be finished. I think this could be a reason” - said secretary.

Additionally, as Kirkilas noticed, “wrong” data, provided by Russia about crashed two weeks ago Su-27 will not have big influence on the crash reasons investigation process and will not be able to affect on the flight recorder data decoding.

Wednesday evening investigating team leader brigadier-general Vitalijus Vaiksnoras said, that when Russia provided data about ’some other plane’, Lithuania had to suspend the Su-27 flight recorder data decoding process.

General added, that flight recorder data evaluation will be continued only after receiving russian radars data and records of negotiation between russian control service and Su-27 pilot Valery Troyanov.

By the Vaiksnoras statement, russian radar data are necessary for comparison with the crashed Su-27 flight recorder data.

“We do hope Russia will provide us with the necessary information. Otherwise while making conclusions we will have to go by estimates. Russia should be interested in helping us to investigate this case” - Vaiksnoras said.

27th of September he noticed, that investigation commission experts, using the inventory, provided by Ukraine, already get the flight recorder data and started to decode them.

All necessary inventory, including computer with decoding software, were delivered into Lithuania from Ukraine. How much time will take to decode flight recorder data Vaiksnoras didn’t said, noticed that during the fall, titanic Su-27 flight recorder was broken, magnetic tape was shredded. “Our experts are working, Ukranians are helping them, Russian representatives are spectating”.

Also Russian news agency Izvestia reported that flight recorder data recovering process was successefully finished, according to interview with Lithuania air forces commander major general Valdis Tutkus, made by TV forumas, national Lithuanian TV channel. At the same time he refused to tell something about the received information, because this data can’t be evaluated without connection to the radars systems data.

Tutkus said, that Lithuanian side asked Kaliningrad flights control center to provide radars data about crashed Su-27 flight. “Unfortunately, we didn’t received that data yet. They could help greatly to the investigation process” - he remarked.

By the words of public relations department leader Ruta Apeikyte, in this case at wednesday evening authorized representative of Russian ministry of defence experts delegation, lieutenant general Sergey Buynetov was hastily summoned into the ministry. He was told to represent crashed Su-27 flight data ‘as soon as possible’.

At the same time lasts scandal with resigning of Lithuania air forces commander. As general Valdas Tutkus made understand, colonel Jonas Marcinkus was resigned not because of espionage for the Russia, but for the ‘unauthorized phone calls with Russian colleagues during the Su-27 incident investigation, and, for sure, for the alcohol dependability’.

Reminding, 26 of September Lithuania air forces commander colonel Jonas Marcinkus was resigned from his position in relation with Su-27 crash incident. It was reported by Lithuanian ministry of Defense. The head of ministry Gediminas Kirkilas noticed in radio interview, that ‘decision was taken based on information, received from Lithuanian secret services’.