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Netherlands calls on Russia to offer compensation for MH17 crash relatives

On Thursday, the Joint Investigation Team released its update in the criminal investigation of the MH17 crash

THE HAGUE, May 25. /TASS/. The Netherlands has asked Russia to offer compensation for the relatives of those who were killed in flight MH17 crash in Donbass in 2014, Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok told reporters in The Hague on Friday.

The minister said he had discussed this with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov. "We have turned to the Russian side with a demand to offer compensation for the relatives of the MH17 crash victims," he said.

Blok also called on Russia to "fully cooperate in the criminal investigation into the tragedy" carried out by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT). He said the Netherlands considers that Russia "is responsible for sending to Ukraine the Buk missile system, which downed the Boeing."

On Thursday, the Joint Investigation Team, consisting of representatives of Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine, released its update in the criminal investigation of flight MH17 crash. According to JIT, "the BUK-TELAR that was used to down MH17, originates from the 53rd Anti Aircraft Missile brigade (hereinafter 53rd brigade), a unit of the Russian army from Kursk in the Russian Federation."

Russia’s Defense Ministry rejected all the accusations saying that none of the Russian Army’s air defense missile systems had ever crossed the border between Russia and Ukraine. The ministry also said that Russia provided the Dutch investigators with overwhelming evidence clearly pointing to the complicity of Ukrainian crews of Buk missile systems in destroying the Boeing airliner.

The Boeing-777 passenger plane operated by Malaysian Airlines crashed on July 17, 2014, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in the east of the Donetsk region. As many as 283 passengers and 15 crew members - citizens of 10 states, were killed in the crash. The parties to the armed conflict in Donbass accused each other of its complicity in the tragedy.