Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

(Ambassador Vladimir Malygin's letter to the Editor of the Malta Independent, Saturday, October 17, 2015)

I refer to the article called “Flight 17” (October 14, 2015) dedicated to the Dutch MH17 crash report.

Its first sentence reads “A Dutch Safety board has found that a missile launched from rebel-held Ukraine smashed into Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 […]”.

I would say that this is quite misleading and might give readers the wrong impression. However imperfect and biased the report may be, it does not directly point the finger of blame.

At the same time, the Chairman of the Safety board stated that there were sufficient reasons to close the airspace over the eastern part of Ukraine before 17 July 2014, which the Ukrainian authorities failed to do.

As far as the investigation is concerned, Russia has repeatedly voiced its concerns regarding the manner in which it was conducted.

Unfortunately, Russia's proposals to use the UN Security Council mechanisms to organise an objective, transparent and comprehensive probe into the MH17 tragedy were ignored, just as its calls to adhere to UNSC Resolution 2166, which was adopted at our initiative and contains provisions describing how the investigation is to be carried out. Needless to say, under various pretexts Russian experts were denied equal and full access to this probe.

To this day, Ukraine has made public neither military air traffic control recordings nor information on the operations of its air defence forces in the region on the day of the crash. Despite making many claims about the cause of the crash, our Western partners, the US in the first place, are still refusing to share any related satellite pictures. Why?

As opposed to this, Russia has always actively co-operated with the international group of experts, providing it with extensive information and various materials, including its military monitoring data.

Moreover, Russian experts from arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey carried out a thorough study and published their own report, which showed that the missile, that had apparently shot down the Malaysian Boeing, had been launched from the area, which had been controlled by the Ukrainian armed forces at that time. The shape of puncture marks found on the jet’s fuselage also indicates it was brought down by an older type of missile that is no longer part of the Russian military arsenal, but is still utilised by the Ukrainian army.

We believe that the investigation should be continued with the necessary adjustments and the participation of all countries that possess materials which could shed light on the MH17 tragedy. That is why we have asked the head of the International Civil Aviation Organisation to intervene in the probe.

It goes without saying that Russia stands ready to provide full assistance to international efforts aimed at revealing the truth about the Malaysian Boeing catastrophe over Ukraine.