MOSCOW, November 18. /TASS/. Moscow still regrets that it was barred from the investigation into the July 2014 MH17 disaster over in Ukraine and believes that this in no way contributed to the impartiality of the probe, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the media on Friday.
"This is a very important message: we remain disappointed that Russia was not able to be involved and was not allowed to join the investigation that was conducted. We are certain that the decision to bar the Russian side from the investigation at a minimum did not contribute to the probe’s impartiality. As for the court’s verdict proper, its deep analysis is required now," the Kremlin spokesman stressed.
A Dutch court on Thursday ruled against the four defendants in the case of the MH17 flight disaster that occurred over Ukraine in July 2014. The four men in question are the former head of the Donetsk People's Republic’s militia Igor Girkin (Strelkov) and his subordinates Sergey Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov and Leonid Kharchenko. They were charged with bringing a Buk missile defense system from Russia to Ukraine. According to Dutch and Belgian investigators a missile launched with this system shot down the passenger plane. Girkin, Dubinsky and Kharchenko were sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment. Pulatov was acquitted.
Malaysia Airlines’ Boeing-777 (passenger flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur) was shot down on July 17, 2014 over the Donetsk Region of Ukraine, killing 298 people - citizens of ten countries. The Joint Investigation Team announced in June 2019 that it had established a list of four suspected accomplices. Their trial began in the Netherlands on March 9, 2020.
Russian officials have repeatedly expressed distrust towards the investigation team, pointing to the groundlessness of the prosecution's arguments and reluctance to take into account Moscow's arguments in the course of the investigation.