Russia will continue helping the investigation into the 2014 crash of a Malaysia Airlines-operated Boeing MH17 so that the truth would be determined and real culprits would be held accountable, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th June, 2019) Russia will continue helping the investigation into the 2014 crash of a Malaysia Airlines-operated Boeing MH17 so that the truth would be determined and real culprits would be held accountable, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.Earlier on Wednesday, the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), whose conclusions Russia has called groundless in the past, announced Names of four suspects, three Russians and one Ukrainian. The investigators believe that they were accomplices to delivering a Buk missile system to a launch site in eastern Ukraine and a shot at the Boeing.
"In these circumstances, we keep having fair questions regarding the quality of the work of the JIT. All of this supports the concerns we have voiced about the process being biased and one-sided. Nevertheless, Russia will continue helping the probe so that the truth about the MH17 crash would be determined and real culprits would be punished fairly," the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry rejected the allegations of Russia's unwillingness to cooperate.
"Russia has worked actively with the Netherlands and submitted all the information it had on the MH17 crash. As part of this, relevant Russian agencies carried out an inordinate amount of work," the ministry said.
"Besides, Russia has offered to work together from the very beginning. Instead, international investigators prevented Moscow from fully participating in the JIT, assigning Russian efforts a secondary role. At the same time, they made Ukraine a full participant, giving it an opportunity to falsify evidence and minimize responsibility over its failure to close its airspace," the ministry said.
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.
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.
