As it became known to Kommersant, the garrison military court in Kaluga sentenced Alexei Skvortsov, deputy squadron commander of the 52nd Guards Aviation Regiment, and technician Igor Aristov to suspended sentences. Through their fault, as was established by the investigation and the court, there was an accidental ejection of the crew from the cockpit of a Tu-22M3 bomber standing on the runway, which led to the death of three senior officers of the regiment, including its commander. The convicts themselves are convinced that the tragedy happened due to a technical malfunction of the combat vehicle, which neither the investigation nor the court were able to identify. On appeal, they will demand that the sentence be overturned and that the criminal investigation be continued.
The 2nd Western District Military Court in Moscow will consider the appeal of Major Skvortsov and civilian specialist of the 52nd Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment Aristov against the guilty verdict handed down by the Kaluga Garrison Military Court. For violating the rules for flying or preparing for them (Article 351 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), which negligently caused the death of three people, the pilot and technician were threatened with real prison terms of up to seven years, but the court of first instance showed leniency towards them: the defendants received, respectively, three years and two and a half years probation. However, both of them appealed the decision.
As Sergey Ivanov, Major Skvortsov’s lawyer, explained to Kommersant, the investigation and the court could not establish the causes of the accident, and therefore it was at least premature to name its perpetrators.
In the appeal, the defense, according to lawyer Ivanov, will demand that the verdict of the garrison court be canceled and the materials of the criminal case be returned to the prosecutor in order to eliminate the shortcomings in them that prevent an objective and fair court decision. Not satisfied with the result of the trial and the prosecutor’s office, which filed an appeal against him.
Recall that the accident occurred on March 23, 2021 at the base airfield of the 52nd air regiment Shaikovka in the Kaluga region. On this day, the unit worked out the procedure for “emergency lifting of combat vehicles into the air in connection with an attack on the airfield of a mock enemy.” Among the participants in the training was the deputy commander of the squadron of Tu-22M3 supersonic bombers Skvortsov, and the commander of the unit, Colonel Vadim Beloslyudtsev, the navigator of the regiment, Major Denis Sultanov, and the navigator-instructor, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Podsoblyaev, were supposed to check his training.
When the crew took their seats in the cockpit, Alexei Skvortsov began preparing the aircraft for takeoff, which included supplying power to various bomber systems. As soon as the pilot lifted the next switch of the circuit breaker with the release (AZR) of the electrical circuit, in front of the three members of his crew, the boards with the inscriptions “Force. abandonment.”
Tu-22M3 automation gives the commander the right to eject his subordinates forcibly – by his decision from his seat in the cockpit.
The events of March 23, 2021 also developed according to this scheme: immediately after the activation of the AZR, the inspectors could no longer influence the situation.
Their arms and legs were tightly fixed with protective straps, the cockpit canopy doors shot back, and over the next five seconds, the senior officers, along with their chairs, were thrown out of the cockpit by triggered squibs. Since the plane was standing still at the time of ejection, the parachute systems of all three seats opened, but could not be filled with the oncoming air flow, and the inspectors died, crashing after falling onto concrete slabs. Only Aleksey Skvortsov remained in the cockpit.
The conducted investigation established that the preparation of the combat vehicle for takeoff was carried out by the pilot Skvortsov in the normal mode. Another thing is that the supply of electricity he performed to the forced escape system was only supposed to turn it on, but not activate it. Crew evacuation on a serviceable aircraft is not carried out by an AZR automatic device, but by an additional toggle switch installed in the circuit, located in a niche under a protective cover, which is also screwed to the panel with a thin wire with a seal that insures the toggle switch from accidental access. In combat conditions, the Tu-22M3 commander simply tears this wire with the force of his fingers, opens the lid and raises the toggle switch, and it was not possible to find out what condition all these devices were in during the exercises on March 23, 2021. This is the main claim of the convicts to the investigation and the garrison court.
Technician Aristov, who checked the combat vehicle before the flight, assured the investigation and the court that after the inspection he brought the toggle switch to the off position, after which he closed the device with a lid and sealed it, as required by the instructions. Pilot Skvortsov, in turn, told the investigation that before preparing for the flight, he paid attention to the broken seal and the open cover of the niche with the toggle switch, but did not attach any importance to this. At the same time, at the time of the inspection of the aircraft, which was carried out by military investigators after the emergency, the cover and even the seal were in place.
“Thus, it is still unclear who and at what moment interfered with the operation of the toggle switch,” lawyer Ivanov explained to Kommersant.
– Numerous fingerprints and traces of sweat were found on the device itself, however, examinations showed that they do not belong to any of the defendants. We believe that the cause of the tragedy was nevertheless a technical malfunction of the aircraft, and we will insist in the Court of Appeal on a more thorough study of this version.”