UNITED NATIONS, September 29 (RIA Novosti) - Russia submitted to the United Nation's Security Council a list of questions that it demands to clarify during the investigation of the Malaysian MH17 flight crash in southeastern Ukraine, the letter released on the UN's website on Monday said.
According to the letter dated 19 September 2014, the first priority is to "lay out the pieces of the aircraft structure and analyze the damage to the pieces and possible causes of that damage," which is a "customary and mandatory" part of the investigation.
Another urgent issues, listed in the letter, include searching for projectiles at the crash site, conducting post-mortem examination of the flight's crew and passengers, "including for the purpose of detecting any projectiles and other foreign objects or substances," and examining data from Ukrainian ground radar.
Russia also insists on examining the communication between the crew, captured by on-board microphones, as well as examining the communication between air traffic controllers at the Dnipropetrovsk Air Traffic Control Center and Kiev's military authorities. The data from the countries and organizations involved in the investigation concerning the radar situation in the region, including the United States, NATO and Russia should also be requested and studied.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in Ukraine's eastern region of Donetsk on July 17, killing all 298 people on board. The reasons behind the tragedy are still unclear.
The Dutch Safety Board issued a preliminary report on the crash on September 9, saying that the Malaysia Airlines plane broke up in mid-air as the result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from the outside. The full report on the crash will be published within a year.
