Ukraine International Airlines (UIA, Kyiv) has filed a lawsuit against Iran over the downing of its passenger plane flight PS752, the Iranian service of Radio Liberty reported.

The lawsuit, filed in court in Ontario (Canada), is dated January 2022. It lists Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as two defendants. The lawsuit contains demands for compensation from Iran.

UIA confirmed this information to Interfax-Ukraine.

In January 2022, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that Ukraine and Canada agreed on a series of steps to ensure justice in the case of Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS 752, which was shot down by Iran.

As reported, the UIA Boeing 737-800 passenger plane, which was supposed to operate flight PS 752 on the Tehran-Kyiv route, was shot down near the Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran immediately after takeoff early in the morning on January 8, 2020. There were 167 passengers and nine crew members onboard. They all died. Among the dead there were 11 citizens of Ukraine (including nine crew members), 82 citizens of Iran, 63 citizens of Canada, 10 citizens of Sweden, four citizens of Afghanistan, three citizens of Germany and three citizens of Great Britain.

On January 11, Iranian authorities admitted that Boeing was shot down by the Iranian military mistakenly. Later, commander of Aerospace Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Amir Ali Hajizadeh said that took full responsibility for the crash of the Ukrainian plane.

At the end of July, negotiations were held in Kyiv with the Iranian side to pay compensation for the downed UIA plane. On October 20, Ukraine and Iran completed the second round of talks on the downed UIA plane near Tehran.

In February, the media released an audio recording of a man identified by sources as Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif discussing the possibility that the downing of Flight PS 752 was a deliberate act. Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Yevhen Enin said that the pretrial investigation bodies and the Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine were examining the audio recording.

According to Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, Ukrainian prosecutors are doing everything possible to establish the objective truth in the case, actively implementing the instrument for sending requests for international legal assistance. At the same time, the Iranian side did not provide full answers to the Ukrainian requests for international legal assistance, and left the last of them without any response at all. She clarified that three rounds of official Ukrainian-Iranian negotiations have already taken place, but four months later no response has been received from the competent authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In November 2021, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine said that the department took into account the information about the start of hearings in the Iranian military court of the case of the downed flight PS752, the first meeting of which was held in Tehran on November 21, noting that Iran did not respond to requests for international legal assistance in this matter.