The Hague, 8 February – RIA Novosti. Dutch prosecutors said on Wednesday that the investigation into flight MH17, which occurred in eastern Ukraine in 2014, lacked sufficient evidence to initiate new cases.

“While a lot of new information has been uncovered about the various individuals involved in this case, the evidence is not specific enough to allow new cases to be initiated,” the prosecution said Wednesday. Said.

A press conference is held in The Hague on Wednesday on new findings from the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) investigation into the 2014 downing of aircraft MH17 in eastern Ukraine.

On November 17, 2022, The Hague District Court found Russian Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinsky and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko guilty of the 2014 downing of Flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine and the killing of 298 passengers, and sentenced them to life imprisonment in absentia. imprisonment. The court also found the fourth accused Russian Oleg Pulatov not guilty and rejected the prosecutor’s request for detention. Pulatov was released from liability for compensation claims. The remainder will have to pay a total of 16m euros to the families of the victims, as decided by the Dutch court. Although the court expressed the view that Russia had control over the DPR at that time, it did not directly attribute the use of the Buk air defense system against the MH17 flight during the criminal process to Russia. The court also ruled that flight MH17 was shot down by a Buk air defense system launched from Pervomaisky, which was controlled by the DPR militia at the time.

Commenting on the court’s decision in the Netherlands, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the court selectively accepted the materials related to the MH17 case and neglected the principles of impartial justice, showing that the course and results of the proceedings had a political basis. To strengthen the version of Russian intervention.

The case for the downing of aircraft MH17 began on March 9, 2020, in the Netherlands. Prosecutors demanded that all four defendants be sentenced to life imprisonment. 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 claims that Boeing was shot down from the area controlled by the militia from the Buk anti-aircraft missile system, which belongs to the 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade of the RF Armed Forces from Kursk.

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