The joint investigation team (JIT), looking into a 2014 crash of a Malaysia Airlines-operated Boeing MH17, believes it unlikely that a crew of the Buk missile system that allegedly caused the crash decided to go to eastern Ukraine on their own and wants to find out who sent them, Wilbert Paulissen, chief constable of the Netherlands National Police, said Wednesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th June, 2019) The joint investigation team (JIT), looking into a 2014 crash of a Malaysia Airlines-operated Boeing MH17, believes it unlikely that a crew of the Buk missile system that allegedly caused the crash decided to go to eastern Ukraine on their own and wants to find out who sent them, Wilbert Paulissen, chief constable of the Netherlands National Police, said Wednesday.Russia has criticized the JIT conclusions in the past, calling them groundless.
"It's not plausible that the crew [of Buk TELAR] decided autonomously to go to eastern Ukraine, and therefore we are looking for more information about who sent them there," Paulissen told a press conference.
The Boeing, which was on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed near the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. All 298 people, mostly from the Netherlands, who were on board the plane were killed. Kiev blamed local militia for the crash, but they said they had no equipment that would allow them to down a plane at that altitude.
The Dutch-led joint investigation team, which does not include Russia, concluded that the plane had been allegedly downed by a Buk missile that belonged to the Russian Armed Forces. Russia has stressed that it gave the Netherlands radar data and documents proving that the missile belonged to Ukraine, but the information was not taken into account.
The Russian Defense Ministry has said that all missiles like the one, whose engine the Dutch-led commission showed, were decommissioned after 2011.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has said that the accusations against Russia were baseless and the investigation was biased and one-sided. Russian President Vladimir Putin has pointed out that Russia was excluded from an investigation of the crash in the east of Ukraine, and Moscow could only recognize the results of the probe if it was a full-fledged participant.
