Dutch prosecutor’s office: new results of the MH17 investigation will be about the crew of the Buk air defense missile system

PARIS, November 23 – RIA Novosti, Anastasia Ivanova. The new results of the investigation into the crash of Flight MH17, which will be announced in the spring of 2023 in eastern Ukraine, will relate to the identification of the crew of the Buk air defense system that shot down the plane. A spokesperson for the Dutch prosecutor’s office gave the decision to deploy to RIA Novosti Brechtier van de Moosdijk.

It was announced in an interview with RIA Novosti that the new results of the investigation carried out by the Dutch prosecutor’s office will be published.

Dutch police had previously mentioned progress if the Buk crew were identified, but described the results as incomplete. At the same time, the District Court of The Hague pointed out a number of gaps in the ongoing investigation, noting that it was impossible to detect the actions of the SAM team while sentencing the four criminals on November 17. It is unclear who gave the order to launch the missile on flight MH17.

On Thursday, The Hague District Court found Russia’s Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinsky and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko guilty of shooting down a Malaysian plane in eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing 298 passengers and sentenced them to life in absentia. At the same time, the court found the fourth defendant, Russian Oleg Pulatov, innocent and refused the prosecutor’s request to be sent to prison. The defendant was relieved of liability in compensation cases. The rest have to pay a total of 16m euros to the families of the victims.

While sentencing, the court did not directly attribute the use of the Buk air defense system against flight MH17 to Russia, although Russia claimed that it was controlling the DPR at the time. The court also ruled that flight MH17 was shot down by a Buk air defense system launched from Pervomaisky, which was occupied at the time by the DPR militia.

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the court selectively accepted materials related to the MH17 case and neglected the principles of impartial justice, showing that the course and results of the proceedings were based on a political order towards Moscow. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed regret that Russia was not allowed to participate in the investigation, emphasizing that this did not contribute to the impartiality of the investigation.

The Malaysian Boeing, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on flight MH17, crashed near Donetsk on 17 July 2014. There were 298 people on board, all dead. Kyiv immediately blamed the militia for the plane crash, but they said they did not have the means to bring the plane down that high.

Ukraine refused to provide data from its radars, and the United States did not provide satellite imagery showing the rocket launch moment to the investigation, as they claimed.

The Russian side delivered to the Netherlands not only Russian radar data, but also documents proving that the Buk air defense missile that hit Boeing belonged to Ukraine and was launched from the territory, Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Vinnichenko told RIA Novosti. It is controlled by Kyiv, but these investigators ignored the information.

At the same time, on the first day of the trial, the prosecutor’s office admitted that it has received and is examining the data of the Russian prosecutor’s office. The investigation was conducted by a joint investigative team (JIT) led by the Dutch Attorney General’s Office, without the involvement of Russia. The investigation alleges that Boeing was shot down from Kursk, from the militia-controlled area, from the Buk anti-aircraft missile system, which belongs to the 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade of the Russian Armed Forces.

The prosecution line was built solely on the testimonies of anonymous witnesses. Russian defendant Pulatov’s defense in the case said this made it difficult to assess the credibility of his statements, but the Dutch prosecutor’s office insists that anonymity is necessary for security reasons.