THE HAGUE, October 16. /TASS/. Russian Ambassador Alexander Shulgin was summoned to the Dutch Foreign Ministry after Moscow withdrew from consultations with the Netherlands and Australia on investigation into flight MH17’s crash in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
"The Cabinet of Ministers regrets Russia’s unilateral decision and stresses its determination to continue the negotiations in order to find a solution that would compensate for the huge suffering and loss caused by the crash of flight MH17," Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok said in a note to the country’s parliament. "Today we summoned the Russian ambassador to the Foreign Ministry, and this information was conveyed to him."
The minister added that his country "leaves all options on table for establishing the truth, achieving justice and holding all those involved accountable."
Russia’s further participation in trilateral consultations with the Netherlands and Australia on the Malaysian Boeing that crashed over Donbass in July 2014 is pointless, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday. The Hague is responsible for sabotaging the consultations, it said. The announcement was made after The Hague filed an intergovernmental complaint against Russia with the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR).
According to the ministry, Russia agreed in 2018 to conduct trilateral consultations with Australia and the Netherlands, assuming that such consultations would, based on the facts, establish the true causes of the crash of flight MH17. "However, it appears that Australia and the Netherlands have never wanted to figure out what had really happened in the summer of 2014 and were only planning to force Russia to admit its guilt and obtain compensation for the relatives of those killed," the statement says.
Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, a Boeing 777 wide-body airliner headed from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed on July 17, 2014, in the Donetsk Region of Ukraine, killing 298 people from 10 countries. A Joint Investigative Team (JIT) was created to investigate the air disaster, which included representatives from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine. In June 2019, experts claimed that they had identified a group of four people, suspected of having been involved in the tragedy, three of whom are Russian nationals, and the fourth is a Ukrainian national. The court hearings against them began on March 9.
Russian officials repeatedly doubted the JIT findings, pointing out the baselessness of the plaintiffs’ arguments and the unwillingness to use the conclusions of the Russian side during the investigation.