NOVO-OGAREVO, July 21 /ITAR-TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has urged all the warring parties in Ukraine to ensure the conditions for the full investigation of the crash of the Malaysian Boeing plane in the Donetsk region. The RF head of state made a corresponding special statement on this issue.
Putin called what has happened in the Donetsk region a terrible tragedy and said that Russia “has repeatedly called on all the warring parties to immediately stop bloodshed and sit down at the negotiating table.”
“It can be said with confidence that had the combat actions in the east of Ukraine not been resumed on June 28, this tragedy would have not happened for sure,” the president noted.
“At the same time, nobody should and has the right to use this tragedy for achieving the mercenary political goals,” Putin stressed.
He added that such developments should not separate, but unite people.
“All the people responsible for the situation in the region should raise their responsibility both before their own people and the peoples of the countries representatives of which have fallen victim to this catastrophe,” the president said.
“It is necessary to do everything to ensure security of work of international experts at the tragedy site,” the president noted. “Representatives of Donbas, Donetsk, representatives of the Ukrainian Emergencies Ministry and Malaysian experts are already working there today. But this is not enough.”
He stressed the need to send to the catastrophe site to work “a full-fledged expert group under the ICAO aegis and the corresponding international commission.” “It is necessary to do everything o ensure its full, absolute security, provide the humanitarian corridors it needs in its work,” Putin said.
The Russian leader also said that Moscow for its part would do everything that depends on it to “make the conflict in the east of Ukraine transfer from today’s military phase to the discussion phase at the negotiating table by peaceful and exclusively diplomatic means.”
The RF president previously discussed by telephone the situation around the investigation of the air crash in the Donetsk region with the leaders of Germany, France, Great Britain, Austria and the Netherlands.
The Boeing 777, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed on Thursday, July 17, in the Donetsk region in the area of combat actions between the local militia fighters Ukraine’s government troops. All 298 passengers were killed in the crash.