Tehran said Monday that it would stop sharing information with Kyiv about the downing of a Ukrainian jetliner last month, after a Ukrainian TV channel released leaked recordings from Iranian air traffic control.

The recordings, which aired on Ukraine's 1+1 Sunday evening, are of a conversation between two air traffic controllers speaking in Farsi about "the light of a missile" on the plane's route.

Iran denied for days after the plane crash that the jetliner was brought down by one of its missiles.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the recording "proves that the Iranian side knew from the start that our plane was hit by a missile." Iranian authorities presumably would have had access to these records directly following the crash.

On Monday, the head of Iran's investigation team, Hassan Rezaeifar, said that Tehran would stop coordinating with Ukraine on the investigation.

"The technical investigation team of the Ukrainian airline crash, in a strange move, published the secret audio file of the communications of a pilot of a plane that was flying at the same time as the Ukrainian plane," Rezaifar said, according to semiofficial news agency Mehr.

"This action by the Ukrainians led to us not sharing any more evidence with them," he added.

Source : VOA