MOSCOW, July 10. /TASS/. Russia has not received any official notices about the Netherlands’ intention to file a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over the 2014 crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in Ukraine, spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry Maria Zakharova told TASS Friday.
"No official notices have been received," she said.
The Dutch diplomatic agency earlier informed that Amsterdam had decided to sue Russia in the ECHR over the downing of the Boeing 777.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, a Boeing-777 passenger plane travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down on July 17, 2014, over Ukraine’s eastern region of Donetsk. The crash killed all the 283 passengers, citizens of 10 countries, and 15 crewmembers. In spite of the active armed conflict on the ground, Kiev did not close its airspace over the Donbass region to international passenger flights. The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) looking into the crash is made up of representatives from the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine.
On May 24, the experts published a provisional report, claiming that the missile system that was used to down Flight MH17 could have been transferred from Russia and be a part of the Russian 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile brigade near Kursk. Moscow rejects the JIT accusations. Particularly, the Russian Defense Ministry said that no Russian army missile system had ever crossed the Ukrainian border. Moreover, the defense ministry’s representatives reported that they had identified the missile that was launched to down the Boeing and established that it was transferred over to the Ukrainian troops back in 1986 and had never returned to Russia since.
In June, the JIT said it had identified four persons suspected of being involved the MH17 crash. They are three Russian nationals Igor Girkin, also known under the nickname of Strelkov, Sergei Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov and a Ukrainian national, Leonid Kharchenko. They are accused of allegedly transporting the missile system that downed the plane to Ukraine from Russia. The trial began in the Netherlands on March 9.
Russian officials have repeatedly expressed doubts and distrust of the results of its work, pointed to the groundless nature of arguments the accusations are based on and unwillingness to use Russian conclusions in the course of the investigation.