Ukraine Rejects “Human Error” in PS752 Downing

• “I want to clearly emphasize: It is early to say that the plane was shot down as a result of human error, as the Iranian side claims.”
• The plane's black box has not yet arrived in France for decryption.
• There is also disagreement about the amount of compensation to the victims' survivors.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister  Dmytro Kuleba said on Tuesday that there were still many questions about Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, the passenger plane that was shot down in Iran. He also said that it was not yet possible to determine whether “human error” was to blame.

“I want to clearly emphasize: It is early to say that the plane was shot down as a result of human error, as the Iranian side claims,” Kuleba said, as reported by Reuters. “We have many questions, and we need a large number of authoritative, unbiased, objective answers about what happened.”

On January 8, the IRGC air defense shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 (PS752) shortly after takeoff from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport. The IRGC fired two surface-to-air missiles, destroying the plane. All 176 people on board were killed. Most of the passengers were Iranian nationals. Citizens from Sweden, Afghanistan, Britain, Canada, and Ukraine were among the passengers.

The Islamic Republic initially denied shooting down the plane, but later acknowledged that a “catastrophic mistake” had been made in the full readiness of the defense system to counter a possible US attack. The Tehran military prosecutor recently said in a recent statement that the Ukrainian plane had been shot down due to a “radar system error,” and “lack of coordination between the defense system user and the coordination center.”

The Islamic Republic also refused to hand over the plane’s black box, which could shed light on how it could have been shot down. Iran finally announced last month that it would send the black box of the downed plane to France for experts from the United States, Canada, France, Britain, and Ukraine to decrypt its data.

Black Box Still Not Delivered to France

The Ukrainian Foreign Minister continued his remarks by saying that in the coming weeks, a delegation from Iran is scheduled to travel to Ukraine to negotiate compensation for the victims’ survivors. According to some reports, the Islamic Republic has provided about $80,000 in compensation to each victim of the plane crash.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky  said last February that his country did not agree with the amount that Iran was willing to pay as compensation to the families of those killed in the downing of its passenger plane. He considered it small and demanded more compensation.

There was a lot of debate about why Iran did not clear the sky during the attack. A recent audio recording from CBC News in Canada indicates that the airspace was open to prevent Iran from giving up its intention to attack the US airbase in Iraq.

The video is reportedly a conversation between the relatives of one of the crash victims and the Iranian prosecutor, Hassan Rezaeifar. The report was denied by Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Mohsen Baharvand, who said it could not be used as evidence.

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