WASHINGTON, June 3. /TASS/. The latest conclusions of Russian maker of the Buk air defense missile system have not changed Washington’s position on the crash of Malaysian Boeing in Ukraine, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf has said.
"Well, our assessment has been clear from the beginning that MH-17 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile fired from separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine, period. We are confident that no Ukrainian air defense systems were within range of the crash," Harf told reporters.
The spokeswoman added that in her opinion "now the story’s changing on the Russian side."
Mikhail Malyshevsky, an adviser to the chief designer of Almaz-Antey Concern told journalists in Moscow on Tuesday that the Malaysian aircraft above Ukraine was downed by an air defense missile, most likely 9M38M1 of the Buk-M1 air defense system.
In turn, Almaz-Antey Director General Yan Novikov recalled that the missile was discontinued in Russia in 1999.
Almaz-Antey experts said the missile was launched from an area south of the locality of Zaroshchenskoye in Ukraine, while analysis did not confirm the version that the missile was launched from Snezhnoye. "For experimental integrity, we can’t say what side owned the missile," he said.
On July 17, 2014, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 passenger airliner on flight MH17 from the Dutch city of Amsterdam to the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur crashed in the Donetsk Region in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. Most passengers - 193 people - were Dutch nationals.
The Dutch Safety Board, which is leading the probe and coordinating the international team of investigators, said in its preliminary report published September 9, 2014 that "Flight MH17 with a Boeing 777-200 operated by Malaysia Airlines broke up in the air probably as the result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside.".