13th April, 2018
Russian has presented its detailed position on the investigation into the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine in 2014, the Foreign Ministry said on Friday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told newsmen on Friday after a meeting with his Dutch counterpart Stef Blok in Moscow.
“We talked a lot about the ongoing investigation into the catastrophe with the Malaysian Boeing MH-17, which was shot down over Donbas in the summer of 2014.
“We presented in detail the steps that the Russian side has repeatedly taken both by government and Almaz-Antey to provide the information we have for an objective investigation’’ Lavrov said.
A Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 crashed in eastern Ukraine in July 2014 while flying to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam.
All 298 passengers and crew on board the aircraft died.
Ukrainian government forces and the local militias traded accusations regarding the incident, which occurred at a time of heavy fighting in the region.
The Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT), made up of Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine, tasked with probing the crash, found that the MH17 airliner was downed by a Buk missile system, which was brought from Russia and returned there after the crash.
However, Russia’s Almaz-Antey concern, which developed the Buk missile system, rejected the findings, saying that three simulations showed that the missile was launched from the Zaroshchens’ke area, which was controlled by the Ukrainian army at the time of the downing.
Earlier in April, Almaz-Antey said that Russian radars did not register a missile launch targeting flight MH17, although it would have been technically possible.