Picked up on a Russian website as well.
23/11/2016 Russian jet crash off Syria blamed on poor decision-making
News Update 23 November
The loss of a Russian MiG-29K naval fighter n the Mediterranean Sea near Syria earlier this month has been blamed on a failure to promptly send the plane to a diversion airfield, after a problem on the ship it had taken off from.
The crash of one of the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov's jets reportedly happened on 13 November. The Russian Defence Ministry confirmed the accident the following day, saying the "air incident" occurred because of a "technical fault". (See BBC Monitoring report "Russia confirms its fighter jet crashed in Mediterranean")
However, Lenta.ru news website said today that the jet crashed because it had run out of fuel before any decision was taken to send it to a diversion airfield following equipment failure on the Admiral Kuznetsov's deck (bit.ly/2gBLHCL).
"The breaking of an arrester wire and delay in rectifying the fault were the starting point of the events. The pilot was forced to eject after using up all the fuel as! the command did not want to send the aircraft to a diversion airfield, hoping to quickly rectify the breakage on the ship's deck. Had it landed at Hmeimim [in Syria], let alone Cyprus, they would have had to report the incident and be reprimanded," Lenta quoted an unnamed source as saying.
An article published on a LiveJournal blogging platform page run by the Russian Centre for Analysis of Strategy and Technology (CAST) provided more details about the incident (bit.ly/2fROu9B).
Quoting an unnamed "informed source", it said the Admiral Kuznetsov's second arrester wire broke after the landing of the second of a group of three fighter jets that had taken off that morning. The broken wire became entangled with the third wire, rendering the system unusable and forcing the third jet to circle overhead awaiting completion of repairs.
The article described the situation on the deck after the breakage as a "mess".
The exact designation of the lost jet has variously been given as MiG-29K and MiG-29KR.
Source: Lenta.ru website, Moscow, in Russian 1215 gmt 23 Nov 16