MOSCOW (Reuters) - Ukraine admitted for the first time Friday that a Russian passenger airliner which crashed into the Black Sea last week might have been blown out of the sky by a missile test-fired by the Ukrainian military.

All 78 crew and passengers, mostly Russian-born Israelis, died after the Tu-154 jet exploded at high altitude and crashed into the sea Oct. 4.

Ukraine, whose military had at first denied responsibility, said Friday a missile from live rocket-firing exercises on the Crimean Black Sea peninsula could have caused the disaster.

"The cause may have been an accidental hit from an S200 rocket fired during Ukrainian exercises," Evhen Marchuk, head of Ukraine's National Security Council, told a news conference to present crash investigators' preliminary findings.

"It is difficult for me, a Ukrainian citizen, to say this, but there is a lot of information in favor of this version," he said in the southern Russian port of Sochi where the investigation is based.

Vladimir Rushailo, head of Russia's Security Council, told the news conference that investigators had concluded the crash resulted from a strike by an anti-aircraft missile warhead.

Initial fears the plane had been the target of terrorism following the September 11 attacks on the United States quickly gave way to suspicions that Ukrainian exercises some 125 miles from the crash site were to blame.

Shortly after the disaster, U.S. officials said a spy satellite showed a missile plume in the vicinity of the crash.

Ukraine's military and Defense Minister Oleksander Kuzmuk denied repeatedly in the days after the crash that their forces had been at fault, saying the exercises were out of range of the airliner, bound for Novosibirsk in Siberia from Tel Aviv.

Thursday, officials revealed Kuzmuk had offered to quit after reports appeared implicating Ukraine but that President Leonid Kuchma had refused his offer, wanting to await the crash report.

Friday, the Defense Ministry said it supported Marchuk's statement but gave no further comment. A news conference with senior officials is scheduled for Saturday in Kiev.

"BIGGER MISTAKES HAVE BEEN MADE"

Kuchma, himself a former missile factory boss, sought to play down the disaster this week, saying "bigger mistakes have been made." He drew bitter condemnation from Israel.

"When it's not your people then yes, you can make those academic observations," a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Wednesday.

"But the fact is that 78 people, most of them Israelis, were killed or died and therefore for us it's a major tragedy."

A Russian newspaper reported Thursday the pilot of the doomed jet had known his plane had been hit and medical evidence showed many passengers had been alive as the plane plunged toward earth.

As the stricken jet fell thousands of feet, Russian air traffic control officials said they heard the pilot desperately ask his crew where the airliner had been damaged.

"This is all we heard. The pilot asked one of his crew, "Where are we hit?" Vladimir Zhukov, deputy chief of Russia's North Caucasus air traffic control, told Kommersant newspaper.

Only 15 bodies were found during an air and sea search operation, which was hampered by bad weather. The black box flight recorders remain on the seabed, too deep for easy retrieval at more than 3,300 feet.

Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, has come under pressure from its former masters in Moscow to explain itself. President Vladimir Putin was reported as being unhappy with the information Ukraine gave.

But Moscow has not allowed an open diplomatic dispute to erupt. Thursday, its ambassador to Ukraine, former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, said the incident should not be allowed to sour relations.

Ukraine is a key buffer state between Russia and the West, and Moscow has sought to keep it within its sphere of influence as Ukraine makes overtures toward Europe and the United States.

The plane crash would be the second time in 18 months that Ukraine's armed forces have lost control of a live missile.

Last year, four people were killed in the town of Brovary when a rocket smashed into their apartment block. The defense ministry denied responsibility for several days until rescue workers found missile parts in the rubble.

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