Moscow will scrutinize a Dutch court’s decision in the case of the 2014 Boeing crash in the Donetsk Region of Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry Deputy Spokesman Ivan Nechayev said at a briefing on Thursday.
"We will analyze this decision because as far as all these issues go, every nuance matters," he said. "We will be ready to make a comment after examining this legal document," Nechayev added.
Earlier on Thursday, a Dutch court began ruling on the MH17 crash case, saying that the Boeing had been downed by a Buk missile fired from near the Pervomayskoye settlement, which was at the time controlled by the Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DPR) militia.
Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala-Lumpur crashed in the Donetsk Region of Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing 298 people from ten countries. In June 2019, the Joint Investigative Team (JIT) announced that it had identified a group of four people, suspected of being involved in the incident.
They are former militia leader in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic Igor Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, and his subordinates Sergey Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov and Leonid Kharchenko. The trial against them began in the Netherlands on March 9, 2020. They are accused of delivering a Buk missile system from Russia to Ukraine. The trial is taking place in the absence of the accused, with two Dutch lawyers representing Pulatov’s interests.
The prosecution demands life imprisonment for all the defendants. Lawyers also seek material compensation for the relatives of the victims. Russian officials have repeatedly expressed their lack of confidence in the results of the JIT’s work, and pointed out the groundlessness of the accusations, as well as the unwillingness to use Moscow’s conclusions during the investigation.
What Happened to Flight MH17?
Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was downed over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014 as the region was mired in a conflict with the new government following a coup earlier that year. As a result, all 298 passengers – mostly Dutch – and crew on board were killed in the crash.
Following the tragedy, Kiev and the then-self-proclaimed republics in the Donbass region blamed each other for the downing, with the latter contending that they had no military equipment that would allow them to shoot down an aircraft at that altitude. The United States and a number of European nations, for their part, rushed to allege that Russia was responsible for the incident – a claim that was made even before an official investigation was launched.
Shortly thereafter, the Netherlands set up a Joint Investigative Team (JIT) to probe the MH17 case, but left Russia out of the process despite the latter’s consistent offers to assist in the investigation.
The JIT’s probe concluded that the aircraft was downed by a Buk missile, allegedly launched from a Russian anti-aircraft missile brigade ordinarily stationed in the city of Kursk, not far from the Ukrainian border. At the same time, the Dutch-led team refused to share concrete evidence to corroborate the claims that Russia was responsible for the downing.
In 2019, JIT announced that international arrest warrants would be issued for four suspects, Russians Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov, and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko, on charges of murder, with a trial over the MH17 case beginning in the Netherlands in March 2020. Moscow has repeatedly slammed JIT’s conclusions as “openly biased” and “one-sided” and emphasized that after being denied access to the formal probe, Russia had carried out its own investigation, which concluded that it was an older version of the missile made in 1986 and belonging to Ukraine that downed the ill-fated plane. Dutch investigators, however, ignored the information.
Moscow Slams Dutch Court's Politically-Motivated Verdict in MH17 Trial
Earlier in the day, The Hague District Court issued a verdict in the trial in absentia of three Russians and a Ukrainian over their alleged roles in the 2014 downing of a Malaysia Airlines passenger aircraft and the deaths of all 298 people on board. Three suspects were found guilty and sentenced to life, while the fourth was acquitted.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has criticized The Hague District Court's verdict in the MH17 case, stressing that the course and results of the trial in the Netherlands show that the proceedings were based on a political order to reinforce the version about Russia’s alleged involvement in the downing of the Malaysian plane.
Moscow expressed regret that the court in The Hague neglected the principles of impartial justice for the sake of political expediency and ignored the fact that all the conclusions of the prosecution are built upon anonymous testimonies.
The ministry pointed out that the court wasn't even perturbed by the fact that the Ukrainian side refused to provide radar data or recordings of communication between air traffic controllers and the plane crew.
"A certain amount of clarity could've been provided by satellite images of the United States, which were taken on the day of the crash. However, Washington refused the requests of the judges to disclose the data, or at least allow the images to be viewed under special conditions," the ministry said.
The Dutch court also ignored documents that were declassified by the Russian Defense Ministry in 2018 concerning the missile, whose debris was found at the crash site.
"Only those materials were selected for analysis that were intended to confirm the version imposed by The Hague. At the same time, documents declassified by the Russian Defense Ministry, indicating the transfer to Ukraine of a missile, the serial number of which matches that found on the wreckage at the crash site, were not taken into account," the ministry said.
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