“I saw it all happen. There were two planes and the Boeing. Then two planes flew off and the Boeing fell. The DPR didn’t shoot down the plane for two reasons. First, we are people and not beasts, and second, we don’t have the technical means [to do this],” Alexander Zakharchenko said during a press conference in the republic’s capital.
“I saw this with my own eyes. I was driving by the city of Shaktersk. And if necessary, there are several dozens of witnesses who saw the same thing…I knew immediately that the plane was shot down by Ukrainian planes. We don’t have any aviation,” Zakharchenko added.
The Kiev government accused the independence supporters of Ukraine's eastern regions of shooting down the aircraft. The latter denies the allegation saying they were not in possession of weapons capable of downing a plane flying at the altitude of some 30,000 feet.
The employee, who claims to be an eyewitness, said a Ukrainian air force Su-25 combat jet took off from an airbase in eastern Dnipropetrovsk carrying air-to-air missiles and returned without them on the day a Malaysia Airlines plane crashed in eastern Ukraine.
The airbase worker said he remembered the pilot saying "the wrong plane" and "the plane was in the wrong place at the wrong time" after he returned from the flight.
The witness identified the Su-25 pilot as Capt. Vladislav Voloshin. The committee called on the Ukrainian Su-25 pilot to take a lie-detector test.
The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) confirmed the same day that Voloshin served in the Ukrainian Air Force, but said was not on flight duty on the day when the Malaysia Airlines plane crashed in eastern Ukraine.
