THE HAGUE, July 17. /TASS/. The high level of politicization of the 2014 Malaysia Airlines MH17 crash case made it impossible to conduct thorough investigations, the Russian embassy in the Netherlands said in a statement on the tenth anniversary of the crash.
"The high degree of politicization of the MH17 case has not allowed to conduct full, thorough and independent international investigations, as required by the UN Security Council Resolution 2166," the embassy said, adding: "The true circumstances of the tragedy have still not been established."
According to the diplomatic mission, "the technical investigation of the Dutch Security Council and the criminal investigation of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) initiated by the Netherlands did not meet the criteria set out in the UN Security Council resolution." Russia "was deprived of the opportunity to fully participate in those investigations," while "the huge amount of data provided by Russia was not taken into account." "As a result, the conclusions obtained this way contain a significant number of inaccuracies and inconsistencies, and many questions directly related to the circumstances of the disaster still remain open," the statement notes.
The embassy pointed out that "the Hague has been consistently shielding the Kiev authorities, deliberately ignoring any facts that would indicate the latter’s responsibility for the disaster." "This approach does not serve to establish the truth, but only leads to further politicization of the matter," the statement says.
"It can not be explained why over the past ten years, not a single question was addressed to Ukraine, which refused to provide radar data and recordings of flight tracking services’ conversations. Neither could it explain the disappearance of Ukrainian air traffic controllers who were working on that day and could have shed light on the circumstances of the tragedy. The issue of Kiev’s responsibility for not closing the airspace over the zone of hostilities, where the air defense systems of the Ukrainian armed forces, including Buks, were deployed, also was not properly analyzed," the Russian diplomatic mission emphasized.
"Over the past ten years, the issue of Ukraine not closing the airspace over the armed conflict zone in Donbass has been repeatedly raised in the Netherlands, including by parliamentarians. Thus, back in October 2019, members of the Second Chamber of the States General of the Netherlands initiated an appeal to the government demanding to conduct an appropriate investigation. However, the initiative was effectively put on hold, and no answer to the question was ever presented. To this day, the Dutch authorities stubbornly avoid discussing this topic, pretending that it has no relevance in this matter," the statement added.
MH17 crash and investigation
Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in the Donetsk Region of Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing 298 people from ten countries. A joint investigative team (JIT) comprising representatives from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine, was established in order to carry out a criminal investigation into the crash. The case was heard at the Hague District Court. In November 2022, the court found three people guilty in the case and sentenced them in absentia to life imprisonment. They were former militia leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Igor Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, and his subordinates Sergey Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov and Leonid Kharchenko. Oleg Pulatov, the fourth defendant and the only one whose interests were represented by a team of lawyers, was acquitted due to lack of evidence.
In February 2023, the JIT announced the suspension of its investigation into the MH17 crash, citing the lack of grounds for prosecuting new individuals.