More questions than answers on the crash in Greece of the Antonov An-12BK, chartered by the Ukrainian company Meridian LTD. The plane was carrying mortar bombs and eleven tons of explosives, according to initial information from the Greek prosecutor’s office. Isidoros Dogiakos, prosecutor of the Supreme Court, shared the first elements of the investigation, while waiting for the black boxes to be examined by experts in air crashes. All eight crew members killed were Ukrainians themselves.
The plane registered UR-CIC had left Niš airport (Serbia), heading for Dhaka (Bangladesh), with a planned stop in Amman (Jordan), according to information provided by Denis Bogdanovich, general manager of Meridian. Information since corroborated by the Bangladeshi Minister of Foreign Affairs, Massoud Bin Momen, for whom it would not be a great loss, insofar as ” this type of cargo is covered by insurance “. The weapons were destined for the Bangladesh Army and the Border Protection Corps, the ultimate beneficiary of the shipment.
The official supplier to the Asian state is the Serbian company Valir, which acts in partnership with the Serbian Ministry of Defense and the main arms manufacturers in the Balkan country. The weapons would therefore not come from the arsenal supplied by the West. The director of Valir, Mladen Bogdanovic (same last name as the president of Meridian, but in a Serbian transcript), informed the Greek Unified Search and Rescue Coordination Center that the cargo consisted of M62 mortar bombs from 60mm and 80mm, as well as 82mm M67s, all of which are indeed in the company’s catalog. For Valir, his company’s responsibility ended the moment the weapons were delivered to the shipper.
While there is information from public sources about Valir, as far as Meridian is concerned, there is very little information about the true nature of its deliveries and customers. The company was created on July 11, 2003, one can read on its site, and it ” cooperates closely with NATO and the United Nations ” for some ” arms and humanitarian aid deliveries “. Before the July 16 accident, the company had four Antonov Ans with between 53 and 58 years of seniority. Aircraft that no longer meet market conditions leasing commercial. Of these four aircraft, only two seemed to be active: the accident aircraft registered UR-CTI and UR-CAJ. The latter shows very few thefts. Between the destinations are Nairobi in Kenya, Burgas in Bulgaria and Tel Aviv. A rather special roadmap.
According to our information, the plane that crashed in Greece, on the other hand, had passed 36 hours earlier in France, in Paris, where it landed at Châlons-Vatry airport on July 14 at 3:53 p.m. to return to Sarajevo two hours later, under flight numbers MEM3005 and MEM3082. He came from Marseille where he was seen on July 13 and 14. What this plane was doing on French soil is a mystery.
Even if the weapons are Serbian, destined for Bangladesh, a country that has taken enormous distances with the West, the fact remains that the company which charters is a Ukrainian and the crew was too. It looks bad in a configuration where President Volodymyr Zelensky begs every day for arms and money from members of the Atlantic Alliance. This case demonstrates in any case that Zelensky is not in control of the situation. The witch hunt undertaken in recent hours with the suspension of Ivan Bakanov, the head of the Ukrainian secret service, the SBU, and Iryna Veneditova, the country’s general prosecutor, whose protagonism at the start of the conflict was very important on the international television channels, could have something to do with this situation.