THE HAGUE, July 17 Russia was deprived of the opportunity to fully participate in the technical and criminal investigations into the crash of flight MH17, which occurred 10 years ago — on July 17, 2014 in eastern Ukraine, the Russian embassy in The Hague said.
«The technical investigation of the Netherlands Safety Board and the criminal investigation of the Joint Investigation Team, initiated by the Dutch side, did not meet the criteria outlined in the UN Security Council resolution. Our country was deprived of the opportunity to fully participate in them,» the diplomatic mission said in a statement.
As noted, the colossal amount of data provided by Russia was not taken into account.
At the same time, as the embassy recalled, the Joint Investigation Team included states not only directly interested in the outcome of the investigation due to their involvement in the incident, but also politically engaged against Russia — Australia, Belgium, Malaysia , the Netherlands and Ukraine.
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 decision of the court 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 involvement RF.
Ukraine refused to provide data from its radars, and the United States did not hand over satellite images to the investigation, which, as they claim, show the moment of the missile launch.
As stated by Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia Nikolai Vinnichenko, the Russian side transferred to the Netherlands not only Russian radar data, but also documentation indicating that the Buk air defense missile that hit Boeing belonged to Ukraine, and it was launched from territory controlled by Kyiv, but investigators did not provide this information. ignored.
At the same time, on the first day of the court hearing, the prosecution admitted that it had received and was studying data from the Russian prosecutor's office. The investigation was carried out by a joint investigation team (JIT) under the leadership of the Dutch Prosecutor General's Office without the participation of Russia. The investigation claims that the Boeing was shot down from the territory controlled by the militia from the Buk anti-aircraft missile system, which belonged to the 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade of the Russian Armed Forces from Kursk.
The state prosecution line was based on the testimony of exclusively anonymous witnesses. The defense of the Russian accused in the case, Pulatov, stated that this made it difficult to assess the reliability of their testimony, but the Dutch prosecutor's office insisted that anonymity was necessary for security purposes.
The Russian Foreign Ministry stated from the very beginning that accusations of Russian involvement in the Boeing crash were unfounded and are regrettable, and the investigation is biased and one-sided. According to the head of the department, Sergei Lavrov, it is full of double standards.