THE HAGUE, January 22. /TASS/. A group of relatives of passengers who died in the MH17 flight disaster over Ukraine in the summer of 2014 have asked the Russian and Ukrainian authorities to provide data from the radars recorded on the day of the disaster, July 17, 2014.

This information is extremely crucial to identifying the causes of the tragedy and to exposing and punishing those responsible, the relatives said in a message quoted on the NOS television channel.

The message was signed by 22 citizens of the Netherlands, Britain, Switzerland, Canada and Australia, who recall that all countries should comply with their commitments to full cooperation in investigating the tragedy (being investigated by the Netherlands).

Ukraine has said it does not have the related data, because its radars were allegedly undergoing technical maintenance at the moment.

Expert Piet Van Genderen said in parliamentary hearings on Friday that that claim looked very doubtful to him. He recalled that there were three radars in the east of Ukraine and it was very hard to believe that all of them were suspended for maintenance on the same day.

"Passengers’ relatives would like checks made into whether there existed copies of data from those radars and the possibility of restoring the images," NOS said. "Also, they want inquiries made into whether there are images taken from space."

Earlier, the relatives turned for assistance to US Secretary of State John Kerry, who immediately after the tragedy said that the United States had at its disposal the full information about the disaster, but produced no proof.

A Boeing-777 of the Malaysian Airlines, en flight from Amsterdam to Kuala-Lumpur, was lost over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. The disaster claimed 298 lives. The Dutch Safety Board, which investigated the case, said in its final report published on October 13 last year that the plane had been downed by a surface-to-air missile Buk. It was presumably launched from an area in eastern Ukraine measuring 320 square kilometers.

Russia’s missile manufacturer Almaz-Antey said the Boeing had been attacked from the area of the Zaroshchenskoye community, which on the day of the attack was controlled by Ukrainian military. Also, Russian specialists found out that the missile that hit the liner was an older model, withdrawn from operation in Russia in back in 2011.