By Margaret Coker and Robert Wall
KIEV--Ukraine intelligence officials said they knew three days
before the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 that rebels in
the east of the country possessed sophisticated air-defense systems
capable of felling a jetliner at altitudes in excess of where the
Boeing 777 was flying.
The disclosure deepens the mystery of why Ukrainian aviation
officials failed to entirely close off the airspace in the Donetsk
region, where the jet was flying went it was shot down, killing all
298 people on board.
Three Buk-M1 medium-range antiaircraft systems, also known as
the SA-11 Gadfly under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
designation, were known to be in rebel hands as early as July 14,
said Vitaly Nayda, the head of the counterintelligence division of
Ukraine's security service. ( Follow the latest updates on the
Malaysia Airlines crash in Ukraine.)
Ukraine imposed a partial flight ban in the region on flights
below 26,000 feet on July 1, and raised the ceiling of the
exclusion area to 32,000 feet on July 14. The Malaysia Airlines
plane was flying at 33,000 feet.
The altitude restrictions on commercial flights were raised
after rebel separatists backed by Moscow on July 14 shot down a
Ukrainian military Antonov An-26 transport plane with eight people
on board over the skies of the Luhansk region. The aircraft was
flying at 21,000 feet.
"I can't think of any reason why you would increase a
restriction to 32,000 feet when the bad boys have just demonstrated
a capability to go all the way," said a European aviation safety
veteran. The airspace should have been closed, he said.
Mr. Nayda said the Ukrainian security service lacks hard
evidence that the AN-26 was shot down by a Buk system, though it
was clear that a surface-to-air missile of some sort was
responsible. More ubiquitous shoulder-fired, heat-seeking
ground-to-air missiles that are viewed as a more common threat to
aircraft wouldn't have been capable of reaching the altitude at
which the military plane was flying. The incident is being
investigated.
Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai on Saturday rejected
accusations that the country's national airline was reckless in
allowing Flight 17 to fly over the conflict zone.
"MH17's flight path was a busy major airway," he said. "It flew
at an altitude set, and deemed safe, by the local air traffic
control. And it never strayed into restricted airspace."
Ukrainian officials have now entirely closed off the airspace in
that region of the country.
The skies over eastern Ukraine ordinarily serve as a major
artery of global air travel, linking flights between Western Europe
and Asia and Northern Europe and the Middle East. More than 400
flights generally traverse the area every day, European airspace
officials have said.
The shoot-down of Flight 17 could have major consequences for
how the global aviation industry operates around conflict zones.
"This has changed everything," said Tim Clark, president of
Emirates Airline, the world's biggest carrier by international
traffic. "We will no longer rest on the protocols we had in place
that we honestly thought were safe."
Still uncertain is who exactly fired the weapon and from
where.
Ukrainian rebels boasted on social media on June 29 that they
gained control of a Buk-M1 system when they overran a Ukrainian
armed forces base in the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine, Russian
news agency Itar-tass reported. Mr. Nayda said that Ukrainian armed
forces made that system nonoperational back in March, around the
time when the fighting in the area kicked off. The core of the
missile system remains on the base, but there are no warheads to
arm it, he said.
"It's about 90% certain that the separatists shot down the
aircraft down by accident," said Steven Pifer, director of arms
control and nonproliferation at Washington-based think tank the
Brookings Institution. Although Ukraine and Russia have Buk
antiaircraft systems, "I would think it improbable the system would
not have been provided by the Russians," he said.
The U.S. suspects Russia has done more than deliver the
equipment. Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said Friday
that the SA-11 is "a sophisticated system" and that "it strains
credulity to think that it could be used by separatists without at
least some measure of Russian support and technical
assistance."
Russian officials have denied supplying the pro-Moscow
separatists with surface-to-air missiles. In the months of conflict
in the region, Russian has issued blanket denials it is training or
coordinating rebels in their offensive against Ukraine.
Mr. Nayda said that Ukrainian intelligence showed that a
three-man Russian military team entered Ukraine along with one of
the Buk missile systems. He didn't say when the equipment crossed
the border into Ukraine.
Intelligence, including photographs and electronic intercepts,
compiled by Ukrainian spies show that three Buk-M1 systems were
shipped out of eastern Ukraine on flatbed trucks in two waves in
the early morning of July 18, said Mr. Nayda. A system missing a
missile crossed the border in a flatbed truck to Russia at 2 a.m.,
and two other missile systems with complete set of missiles crossed
at 4 a.m., he said.
Mr. Navda said that his agency has shared this intelligence with
U.S. officials, but it wasn't possible to immediately verify his
information.
Write to Margaret Coker at margaret.coker@wsj.com and Robert
Wall at robert.wall@wsj.com
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