The Iranian authorities have agreed to pay compensation for the shooting down of a passenger airliner belonging to Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) in early 2020, the CFTS portal reports, citing the RBK Ukraine publication.

"Iran has agreed to pay compensation for the airplane, but this issue will take time and it has various aspects from the technical and legal points of view," the Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry’s spokesman Abbas Mousavi said while commenting on talks with Ukraine over the passenger airliner.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman noted that "many of the passengers" were citizens of Iran.

He added that the talks on the Ukrainian passengers would continue and noted that Tehran accepts its responsibility for the accident.

As the CFTS portal reported earlier, the black boxes of the downed UIA passenger airliner have been decrypted. According to Ukraine’s deputy foreign affairs minister, the decryption was successful despite external damage to the black boxes.