Originally Posted by ATC WAtcher
I do not know if this feasable in Russia.
I have carefully chosen the wording "could have". The report goes to great lenghts to explain why the controller was not required to do so. However the report also explains that under Russian military procedures, the controller actually has this authority. The controller received explicit training sometime before the accident that the PAF flight will operate under civilian rules, and the PIC has final decision authority.
I can well envision the scenario, where the controller was thinking "this a..h.le is going to fly into the ground", but he had instructions not to interfere. While spending pages on the evolving psychological state of the pilots, this likely mental conflict from the side of the controller is not addressed. The report simply sums up that the actions of the controller were both legal and appropriate under the applicable regulations, circumventing that a more assertive controller could perhaps* have saved the day.
(*) Perhaps is the right word, in light of the actions of the Yak-40 crew. I'm not saying that the controller's actions directly contributed, rather that his confused mindset removed yet another layer of swiss cheese, which the report fails to acknowledge. This does not detract from the overall transparency and quality, which I find to be far beyond what we expected from the Russian investigation team.