NSDC Chief: Ukraine Knew Before US and Canada That MAU Plane Was Shot Down
They were silent because they were collecting evidence.
Ukraine learned that the Ukrainian MAU airline plane had crashed due to a missile strike even before the official statements from Canada and the US. This was reported by NSDC Secretary Alexei Danilov in an interview with The Washington Post.
Soon after the crash, which killed all 176 people on board, the leaders of Canada, the US and Great Britain stated that, according to their information, the plane had been shot down by Iran. In a phone call with them, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked to share the information, but did not make any conclusions himself. Danilov assures that this was a strategic decision by the Ukrainian leader.
The reason for the delay in announcing the information was the desire to gather irrefutable evidence on their own and to refrain from hasty harsh criticism of the Iranian side, Danilov claims.
«There was no point for them [Iran] to deny anything,» Danilov said. «We reached this conclusion before the Americans and Canadians did».
On January 8, the MAU plane took off from Tehran airport and soon crashed. There were 176 people on board, including passengers and crew. Among them were 11 Ukrainians: 2 passengers and 9 crew members. The remaining passengers were citizens of Iran (82), Canada (63), Sweden (10), Afghanistan (4), Germany (3) and Great Britain (3). No one survived.
Iran was first directly accused of a missile strike on the plane by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a press conference on January 9. Following him, US President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also reported this.
On January 11, Iran admitted its guilt in the crash of the MAU airliner. It had mistaken it for a «hostile target». General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Aerospace Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (an elite Iranian military unit), took responsibility for the crash of the Ukrainian plane.
The same day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Ukrainian people about the MAU plane crash in Tehran, reporting on a phone call with the President of Iran.
After the plane crash in Iran, a wave of anti-government protests broke out across the country.
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