KIEV, Oct 13: After a week of strenuous denials and equivocation, Ukraine admitted on Saturday that one of its missiles brought a Russian airliner crashing into the Black Sea on Oct 4, with the loss of all 76 passengers and crew.

Defence Minister Olexander Kuzmuk acknowledged that a Ukrainian missile fired during a military exercise had brought the Sibir airlines Tu-154 down and apologized to the families and friends of the victims, mainly Russian-born Israelis.

President Leonid Kuchma presented his “official condolences” in a statement in which he said Ukraine would “do everything possible to ease the suffering of the families of the victims.”

The Sibir airline company said it would demand 10 million dollars in compensation.

“We know we are implicated,” Kuzmuk told reporters. “I apologise to the friends and families of the people who tragically died in this disaster, as well as to the president of Ukraine, the government, the parliament and the Ukrainian people for having damaged the authority of our state.”

He said he “refused neither the moral nor the legal consequences of the disaster. Our duty is to make sure it cannot happen again.”

Referring to the lengthy delay in acknowledging responsibility, he said: “We never tried to lie. There are cases in which you can’t even believe what you see with your own eyes.”

For five days after the disaster officials in Kiev rejected allegations by a Russian naval official, backed up US spy satellite images, that a Ukrainian missile had brought down the airliner flying from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk in western Siberia.

The crash had been initially attributed to a terrorist act or a mechanical failure.

On Tuesday President Leonid Kuchma finally admitted that the airliner could “theoretically” have been downed by a missile.

A joint Russo-Ukrainian-Israeli investigation team headed by Russian Security Council chief Vladimir Rushailo on Friday that the plane had been hit by a missile warhead.

It based its conclusion on an examination of the plane’s wreckage, technical characteristics, data from radar stations and recordings of on-air communications.—AFP