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MH17 crash cannot be considered terrorist act, says Russian envoy to UN court

According to Gennady Kuzmin, the Ukrainian side’s claims that the Buk SAM system is an indiscriminate weapon do not stand up to criticism

THE HAGUE, June 8. /TASS/. The Boeing crash in Ukraine in July 2014 can in no way be considered a terrorist act, as the Ukrainian side is trying to say at the UN International Court of Justice, Russia's representative Gennady Kuzmin said at the hearing on Thursday, according to a TASS correspondent reporting from the courtroom.

According to Kuzmin, the evidence Ukraine has presented that flight MH17 was shot down by a Russian Buk surface-to-air missile (SAM) system is extremely unconvincing and based on bad information. Ukraine has also failed to prove terrorist motives for the downing of flight MH17," he pointed out, "On the contrary, even the District Court of The Hague, which has shown a clear bias against the Donetsk People's Republic and favors Ukraine, concluded that in this case there was no intention to shoot down a civilian aircraft and that the Buk SAM was used to protect airspace. The court, the Dutch Prosecutor's Office and the Joint Investigation Team (which conducted the criminal investigation into the tragedy - TASS) agreed that there was no evidence of terrorism or war crimes in this case."

According to the Russian envoy, the Ukrainian side’s claims that the Buk SAM system is an indiscriminate weapon do not stand up to criticism. "These statements are absurd because the Buk SAM system is a modern, high-precision weapon created for the precise destruction of specific targets and <...> capable of distinguishing between civilian and military aircraft," he pointed out.

Kuzmin also drew attention to the fact that "Ukraine decided not to close the airspace over the conflict zone to civilian aircraft, which fits into the overall picture of Ukraine's active use of civilian targets as human shields to protect its own forces."

On January 16, 2017, Ukraine filed a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice accusing Russia of violating the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The hearing is taking place from June 6 to 14.

In the lawsuit, the Ukrainian side is trying to make the case that the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Lugansk People's Republic (LPR) are terrorist organizations and Russia, their financier, even supplying the very weapons which flight MH17 was shot down with.

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