Russian Probers Find No Sign of Terror in Wrecks

Official Suggestion of Plane Malfunction, Human Error Greeted With Skepticism

Russian soldiers pass debris from a Tu-134 airliner that crashed Tuesday night about a mile from the village of Buchalki in the Tula region, south of Moscow. (Misha Japaridze -- AP)

MOSCOW, Aug. 25 -- Russian investigators said they found no evidence Wednesday that terrorists brought down two passenger jets that crashed almost simultaneously Tuesday night, killing all 90 people aboard, and suggested that the planes' loss could be an improbable coincidence of technical malfunction or human carelessness.

Investigators searching the grassy fields where the airplanes fell, nearly 500 miles apart from one another, recovered flight recorders but discovered no signs of sabotage, officials said. Although not ruling out terrorism, authorities opened a criminal investigation into possible negligence with the transportation minister in charge of the probe.

Despite the government's statements, many Russians, including some aviation experts, considered terrorism the only plausible explanation. The crashes, which came five days before a regional election in the separatist region of Chechnya, fueled suspicions that this was the latest in a two-year wave of Chechen terror assaults that have claimed more than 500 lives.

Russian security forces initially responded as if terrorists were responsible, stepping up security at checkpoints in Chechnya and at airports around the rest of Russia.

Sibir Airlines, which operated one of the lost planes, said it was told by the government that the craft sent a signal just before the crash indicating that it had been hijacked, but Russian officials said they could not confirm that and added that it could have been a general distress signal.

Investigators said they were checking into the condition of the aircraft, the type of fuel used, weather conditions and pilot performance, as well as potential sabotage. Russia's aging fleet of civilian airliners has been a source of concern for years.

"I just think we're talking about negligence," Sergei Ignatchenko, chief spokesman for the Federal Security Service, the domestic successor to the KGB, said in a telephone interview. "Our planes have already used up their resources. Unfortunately, they're still used and they're still flying."

But Ignatchenko also acknowledged the improbability of catastrophe affecting two planes at the same time without terrorist intervention. "It's too much of a coincidence," he said. "We're not denying terrorism. It's one version and we're checking it, of course. But as of now on the sites, we haven't discovered any explosives or any trace of any violence. That's why we're saying the main reason is the violation of safety rules."

President Vladimir Putin, who was heavily criticized for remaining on a vacation when the nuclear submarine Kursk sank in 2000, broke off his holiday at the Black Sea resort town of Sochi to return to Moscow. But in televised remarks, he, too, seemed to discount terrorism, ordering aides to give him "objective, reliable information" and assist the families of the victims.

The tone contrasted starkly with Putin's standard response to apparent terrorist attacks, which he often blames on Chechen rebels before an investigation has begun. When a bomb killed more than 40 people on the Moscow subway in February, Putin said that "no circumstantial evidence is needed" to accuse Chechen terrorists, and he vowed to "liquidate them."

The Chechen separatist leader, Aslan Maskhadov, promised this summer to escalate attacks against Russian targets, but on Wednesday his representative denied any involvement with the plane crashes. "There is no way there could be any connection," Akhmed Zakayev said by telephone from London. "When a terrorist attack happens, even if there are no direct connections, they will always find a Chechen trail."

Analysts noted that Maskhadov does not control all Chechen guerrillas, many of whom follow the guerrilla commander Shamil Basayev.

Either way, Alexei Malashenko, a scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said "of course" the crashes were connected with the Chechen elections. "They deeply want to show everybody they are very strong, they're organized."

Chechen rebels have hijacked planes before, but never destroyed one with a bomb or used one in a suicide attack. If that were shown to be the case this time, "it means it is a kind of evolution of terrorism in Russia," Malashenko said. "They use the experience from abroad, the experience of al Qaeda and the Middle East."