MOSCOW (Sputnik) – He said it was difficult to determine if this information was true as “an overwhelming amount of this information is speculative and based on some sort of rumors or garbled information.”
“I can’t react, first of all because the origin and the identity of this group [Bellingcat] still needs to be established. Secondly, we don’t have any detailed information on identification numbers of Russian weapons. This is more likely an issue for experts in the Defense Ministry,” Peskov told journalists, commenting on Bellingcat’s recent report that the BUK missile carried the identification number 323 and allegedly belonged to the Russian military.
Dutch investigators published a report last October saying that the airliner appeared to have been downed using a Buk surface-to-air missile. a warhead was fired from anywhere within a 320 square kilometer (123 square mile) area of eastern Ukraine, the report said, without specifying who was responsible for the launch.
In a separate probe into the crash, Russian arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey said the missile had exploded near the left side of the aircraft. Almaz-Antey considered this to be proof that the projectile could only be a missile from a Buk system launched from the region of Zaroshchenske, controlled by the Kiev forces at the time of the incident.
