MOSCOW, September 10 (RIA Novosti) – A report on the investigation of a Malaysian Boeing crash in eastern Ukraine could hardly be considered international and independent as a preliminary probe has been conducted by Dutch experts under agreement with Ukraine and its findings are too vague, Russia’s Ambassador to UN Vitaly Churkin said Wednesday.
“I have to conclude that a real international investigation did not take place,” Churkin said in an interview with Rossiya 24 television.
According to Churkin, the report does not even mention a UN Security Council’s resolution calling for a thorough independent international investigation of the crash.
Churkin insisted that the report had failed to clarify the circumstances of the crash.
“It simply confirmed the obvious: the plane did not crash on its own – it was shot down,” Churkin stressed.
Many questions remained unanswered, including the presence of Ukrainian combat planes in the vicinity of the Malaysian plane shortly before the crash.
On Tuesday, the Dutch Safety Board issued a preliminary report on the MH17 crash, saying that the Malaysia Airlines flight broke up in the air probably as the result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside.
However, many experts found the information from the report inconclusive.
The Dutch Safety Board stated that the investigation team will now be working towards producing its final report, which is due next summer.
On July 17, a Malaysia Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in Ukraine’s eastern region of Donetsk, killing all 298 people on board.
The reason for the crash is still a matter of debates. Kiev accuses independence supporters in eastern Ukraine of shooting the plane down, but cannot provide any evidence for this assertion. The local militia leaders say they do not have weapons capable of shooting down a plane flying at 32,000 feet.
Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry said that a Ukrainian combat jet was detected in close approach to the MH17 shortly before it crashed, a claim that can be proven by video shots made in the Rostov monitoring center.
