SCHIPHOL /THE NETHERLANDS/, November 3. /TASS/. The MH17 Boeing crash case defendant Oleg Pulatov claimed he is ready to answer all questions of the court in an interview with his attorney, aired during the court hearing Tuesday.

"Yes, I am ready to answer all questions of the court, I have nothing to hide," he said. "I take part in this court [hearing] not in order to exonerate myself, but to help find the perpetrators, so that they receive the deserved punishment, and the relatives of the victims finally receive closure on this process."

Pulatov pointed out that he was a volunteer and did not contact the Russian officials. "First, I didn’t have time, and second, this is outside of my competence," the defendant said.

He once again stated that he has no information on the delivery of the Buk air defense missile system to Ukraine, and that "the court must get to the bottom of the Boeing crash without pressure or attempts to play on the relatives’ feelings."

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flight MH17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in the Donetsk Region of Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing 298 people from ten countries. The Joint Investigative Team, established for investigation of the incident, claimed in June 2019 that it identified a group of four people responsible for the incident, including Igor Girkin (Strelkov) and his subordinates Segei Dubinski, Leonid Kharchenko and Oleg Pulatov. The court proceedings over the four started on March 9; the defendants are charged with delivering a Buk missile system from Russia to Ukraine.

Russian officials repeatedly expressed lack of confidence in the JIT results, pointing out the groundlessness of the plaintiffs’ arguments and unwillingness to take Russia’s conclusions into account during the investigation.