The Ukranian President, Mr. Zelensky, who spoke by phone with Mr. Trudeau last week just before the UN vote, said the two men were also united in putting pressure on Iran to deliver the flight recorders from Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, which was shot down in January by an Iranian anti-aircraft system minutes after it took off from Tehran’s airport. Of the 176 people who were killed in the attack, 138 were connecting to Canada via Ukraine; of these, 55 were Canadian citizens and 30 were permanent residents.
“I hope that we will be able, eventually, to be able to count on a result-oriented policy from the Iranian government,” Mr. Zelensky said. “Because it is not only that they don’t give us back the black boxes. It is also about their [other] promises. They have to give an official apology. They have to pay adequate compensations. …. They have to do what they have promised. Otherwise, we will have no other choice – and they know our position – but to resort to the international courts.”
Mr. Zelensky said the Iranian side had blamed the pandemic for the delay in delivering the flight recorders to Kyiv, but “this problem cannot wait indefinitely because we have been waiting for quite a long time now.”
