MOSCOW, February 18. /TASS/. New revelations about the MH17 crash in Ukraine in 2014 just go to prove that the Russian side was right, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday, commenting on the leaked document of the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service saying that the incident took place in the region where no Buk missile systems were deployed at the time of the tragedy.
"It once again demonstrates that there are still a lot of questions and these questions call into serious doubt the biased position [on what caused the crash] that has been repeatedly voiced," he said. "Regrettably, Russia has been denied the right to be a member of the international investigative team. That is why we have always been skeptical and distrustful of these hasty and ungrounded conclusions and this information [about the absence of Buk systems] is just more proof that the Russian side was right."
He said he could not anticipate possible impacts of the new information on public opinion on the global arena. "I don’t know, we cannot say anything. Let us wait and see," he said.
When asked why Russia demanded it be included into the Joint Investigation Team, Peskov recalled that immediately after the probe had been launched Russia was accused of "what it did not do, and we categorically disagree with that."
"It was back then that Russia did not hesitate to offer its services as a full-fledged member of the international investigation team," he said, adding that the probe results had been made public before the trial started.
A Boeing-777 passenger plane operated by Malaysian Airlines crashed on July 17, 2014, when it was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, in the east of the Donetsk region. As many as 283 passengers and 15 crew members - citizens of 10 countries, were killed in the crash. Most of the air tragedy's victims - 196 people -were Dutch nationals. The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) including representatives of the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine was set up. In June 2019, the JIT said it had identified four persons suspected of being behind the MH17 crash. The trial is scheduled to begin on March 9, 2020.
Russian officials have repeatedly expressed distrust to the JIT’s conclusions, saying it was reluctant to use Russia’s data.
Bonanza Media, a platform for independent journalist, on Monday made public a number of documents about the MH17 crash. Thus, as follows from one of the documents that was sent to Dutch prosecutors MH17 was flying beyond the range of all identified and operational Ukrainian and Russian locations where 9K37M1 Buk M1 systems were deployed.