Dmitry Peskov has
commented on the leaked document of the Dutch Military Intelligence and
Security Service.
MOSCOW, February 18.
/TASS/. New revelations about the MH17 crash in Ukraine in 2014 just go to
prove that the Russian side was right, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on
Monday, commenting on the leaked document of the Dutch Military Intelligence
and Security Service saying that the incident took place in the region where no
Buk missile systems were deployed at the time of the tragedy.
"It once again
demonstrates that there are still a lot of questions and these questions call
into serious doubt the biased position [on what caused the crash] that has been
repeatedly voiced," he said. "Regrettably, Russia has been denied the
right to be a member of the international investigative team. That is why we
have always been skeptical and distrustful of these hasty and ungrounded
conclusions and this information [about the absence of Buk systems] is just
more proof that the Russian side was right."
He said he could not
anticipate possible impacts of the new information on public opinion on the
global arena. "I don’t know, we cannot say anything. Let us wait and
see," he said.
When asked why Russia
demanded it be included into the Joint Investigation Team, Peskov recalled that
immediately after the probe had been launched Russia was accused of "what
it did not do, and we categorically disagree with that."
"It was back
then that Russia did not hesitate to offer its services as a full-fledged
member of the international investigation team," he said, adding that the
probe results had been made public before the trial started.
A Boeing-777
passenger plane operated by Malaysian Airlines crashed on July 17, 2014, when
it was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, in the east of the Donetsk
region. As many as 283 passengers and 15 crew members - citizens of 10
countries, were killed in the crash. Most of the air tragedy's victims - 196
people -were Dutch nationals. The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) including
representatives of the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine
was set up. In June 2019, the JIT said it had identified four persons suspected
of being behind the MH17 crash. The trial is scheduled to begin on March 9,
2020.
Russian officials
have repeatedly expressed distrust to the JIT’s conclusions, saying it was
reluctant to use Russia’s data.
Bonanza Media, a
platform for independent journalist, on Monday made public a number of
documents about the MH17 crash. Thus, as follows from one of the documents that
was sent to Dutch prosecutors MH17 was flying beyond the range of all
identified and operational Ukrainian and Russian locations where 9K37M1 Buk M1
systems were deployed.
Source: ITAR-TASS
18-02-2020
