A “key witness,” named by Russia, has reportedly claimed that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by the Ukrainian Air Force mistakenly as “it was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
News.com.au quoted the Russian investigative committee as saying that Evgeni Agapov, an aviation armaments mechanic, willingly crossed the Russian border and expressed a desire to cooperate with the probe.
Alleging that the downing of the plane was an accident, Agapov said that a Ukrainian Sukhoi Su-25 aircraft left the Ukrainian air base for “a military task” and returned without ammunition on the day of the crash, July 17, 2014. When a flight control officer asked a “visibly shaken” pilot about what happened with the plane, the pilot said that it was in the wrong place at the wrong time, Agapov recalled.
He contended that the downing of the plane, along with 298 passengers, was an accident and happened in combat conditions.
The witness is now under Russian state protection.
The Ukraine government has maintained that none of its jets were in the air when the Boeing 777 aircraft was shot down over the conflict-torn eastern region.