THE HAGUE, July 17 Russia strongly declares that it was not involved in the crash of flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, the Russian Embassy in the Netherlands said.
“We strongly declare that the Russian Federation is not involved in the crash of flight MH17. All statements to the contrary are untrue,” says a statement on the diplomatic mission’s website.
The embassy emphasized that Russia remains committed to UN Security Council Resolution 2166 and to establishing the true causes of the MH17 plane crash.
A Malaysian Boeing flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on flight MH17 crashed on July 17, 2014 near Donetsk. There were 298 people on board, all of them died. Kyiv immediately blamed the DPR militia for the plane crash, but they said that they did not have the means to shoot down the plane at such an altitude.
In November 2022, the trial in the case of the crash of flight MH17 ended in the Netherlands after two and a half years. The District Court of The Hague on November 17, 2022 found Russians Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko guilty of shooting down flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and killing 298 of its passengers and sentenced them in absentia to life imprisonment. At the same time, the court found the fourth accused Russian, Oleg Pulatov, not guilty and rejected the prosecutor’s request to place him in prison. Pulatov was released from liability for compensation claims. The rest, as the Dutch court decided, will have to pay a total of 16 million euros to the families of the victims. The court did not directly link the use of the Buk air defense system against flight MH17 to Russia during the sentencing, although it expressed the opinion that Russia had control over the DPR at that time. The court also ruled that flight MH17 was shot down by a Buk air defense system launched from Pervomaisky, which was then controlled by the DPR militia.
The Russian Foreign Ministry, commenting on the court decision in The Hague, stated that the court selectively accepted materials on the MH17 case and disregarded the principles of impartial justice; the course and results of the proceedings show that it was based on a political order to reinforce the version of Russian involvement.< br>