'“We know that they have special equipment that can cut communications between an aircraft and the ground or interfere with the parameters on board,” Christian Science Monitor quoted a GRU general as saying, without mentioning his name.

The Superjet, which was crucial to Russia's hopes of becoming a major player in the modern aviation market, took off from an airport in the capital Jakarta on May 9 on a demonstration flight, but it lost radio contact and vanished from radar screens 50 minutes later.

The general further noted that the electronic jamming of the jet’s onboard equipment is the most plausible explanation for the plane’s slamming into the side of a dormant volcano in the Indonesian province of West Java.'

Read more: US Behind Russian Plane Crash: Russian Military Intelligence Organisation