KIEV, Oct 24: Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma accepted his defence minister’s resignation on Wednesday, nearly three weeks after his troops accidentally shot down a Russian airliner during missile exercises, killing all 78 on board.

The plane, a Sibir airliner Tu-154 flying from Tel Aviv to Siberia with mainly Russian-born Israelis on board, plunged into the Black Sea in a ball of flames on October 4 after being hit by a rogue missile.

Ukraine’s Defence Ministry denied for days that it could have made a mistake during its exercises on the Crimean peninsula and Defence Minister Oleksander Kuzmuk told parliament five days after the crash that his troops were not at fault.

But when Kuchma’s spokesman later said Kuzmuk had offered to resign immediately after the crash, commentators accused officials of Soviet-style news management, echoing the secrecy which surrounded the Chernobyl nuclear disaster for days.

In an address on state television on Wednesday, Kuchma said he had suspended several unnamed military officials and had accepted Kuzmuk’s resignation. Two senior officers have already been suspended in connection with the disaster.

Kuchma said a final report from Russian crash investigators had prompted him to accept the resignation. He said all missile launches would be temporarily banned and a commission would review Ukraine’s military training.

‘I ASK FOR FORGIVENESS’: “I ask for the forgiveness of the families, relatives and loved ones of all those who were affected by this heavy grief,” Kuchma said, adding that officials had yet to work out how the long range S-200 missile locked onto the passenger jet.—Reuters