MOSCOW, July 21. /ITAR-TASS/. The West seems not to want an objective and unbiased investigation of a Malaysian passenger Boeing crash in eastern Ukraine, a Russian expert told ITAR-TASS on Monday.
Two contradictory facts - dragging out with the arrival of international experts to the crash scene and the United States’ and the European Union’s rushing to impose more sanctions against Russia - make one doubt that the West really wants to find the truth, said Major General Pavel Zolotarev, a deputy director of the Institute of the USA and Canada Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who formerly headed the Information and Analysis Centre of the Russian Defense Ministry.
“Delaying with the arrival of international experts to the Boeing crash site, on the one hand, can be explained by objective reasons,” he said. “You cannot reach Donetsk by plane - the airport is in the zone of combat operations between Ukrainian troops and local self-defense forces. Helicopters cannot be used due to the same reason. To reach the area by ground transport, Kiev should agree security corridors with the leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic but the Ukrainian authorities are not willing to come into contact with them.”
“So, as long as no investigation is launched, both Kiev and Western countries seek to establish maximum dominance in the information space putting the entire blame for the tragedy on Russia,” he noted.
“On the other hand, due to some reason, the leaders of the United States and the European Union are not requesting, or prefer not to make public, information from Ukraine’s radar stations, although there are reports that a SU-27 fighter was following the Malaysian Boeing over Ukraine. It means that air traffic controllers of the Ukrainian radar station must have seen both their own SU-27, the Boeing and the missile fired at the latter. Such information could have helped to find out from where the strike was delivered,” the expert said.