The Netherlands and Australia are holding Russia legally responsible for the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, over the separatist-controlled zone in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board.
The announcement by the foreign ministers of the two countries came on Friday.
A day earlier, the experts of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) stated that the missile that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 originated from Russia. According to them, the Buk missile that shot down the plane came from Russia’s 53rd Antiaircraft Missile Brigade.
Russia has repeatedly denied its involvement in the tragedy. This time, the country also mistrusted the conclusions drawn by JIT since, according to Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Moscow ‘had not been invited to participate in the probe’.
However, the Dutch government is taking the next step by formally holding Russia accountable.
“The Netherlands and Australia today asked Russia to enter into talks aimed at finding a solution that would do justice to the tremendous suffering and damage caused by the downing of MH17. A possible next step is to present the case to an international court or organisation for their judgment,” AP News quotes Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok as saying.
In turn, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday that the investigation into the MH17 crash in Donbas was ‘reminiscent of the Skripal case’ as there is ‘no evidence’.
Meanwhile, international OSINT project Bellingcat has published the results of the investigation they carried out together with The Insider, and McClatchy DC Bureau on May, 25. They have reportedly identified another key person of interest in the ongoing investigation of the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17). The person known as ’Andrey Ivanovich’, a.k.a. call sign ‘Orion’, is in fact a high-ranking Russian GRU officer named Oleg Vladimirovich Ivannikov.
Photo by Maxim Zmeyev/File Photo/ Forum
