The deputy head of the Russian delegation to PACE, Leonid Slutsky, commenting on the decision of the bureau of the assembly to prepare a report on the situation with the crash of MN17, indicated that such an initiative is an invasion of the competence of the investigation.
Earlier, the head of one of the political groups of the Assembly, Tini Cox, said that the PACE Bureau at the meeting on Friday agreed to prepare a report on the situation of the Malaysian Boeing flight MN17 in 2014 in Ukraine.
“The investigation itself about the MN17 catastrophe is politically biased for the sole purpose of denigrating and demonizing Russia. Here the motivation is absolutely the same,” said RIA Novosti Slutsky, speaking of this initiative.
“I doubt that this is done from the motives of establishing the truth,” the deputy added.
In addition, the preparation of such reports at parliamentary sites is an intrusion into the competence of the investigation, he said.
The deputy believes that “the Russophobian aggressive minority cannot accept the return of the delegation of the Russian Federation to the PACE platform.”
“Anti-Russian initiatives will now crumble from the horn of plenty. We did not expect that it would be easy and simple to work,” he said.
“But we will work, we will bring the position of Russia to the European public and tell the truth about all those events where the West is trying to whitewash Kiev and make Moscow guilty a priori,” Slutsky concluded.
Malaysian Boeing, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur flight MH17, crashed on July 17, 2014 near Donetsk. On board were 298 people, they all died. Kiev blamed the crash for the militia, they said they did not have the means that would allow the aircraft to be shot down at that altitude. According to the Russian Federation, the plane was shot down by a Ukrainian rocket.
The Joint Investigation Group (SSG), which, under the direction of the Prosecutor General of the Netherlands without the participation of the Russian Federation, is conducting an investigation into the circumstances of the crash, later presented interim results. The investigation claims that Boeing was shot down from the Buk air defense missile system, which belonged to the 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade of the Russian Armed Forces from Kursk. As stated by Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Vinnichenko, the Russian side transferred not only the Russian radar data to the Netherlands, but also documentation indicating that the Buk missile system that hit Boeing belonged to Ukraine, but this information was ignored by investigators.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said that the SSG accusations of Russia’s involvement in the collapse of the Malaysian Boeing are unfounded and regrettable, the investigation is biased and one-sided. Later, Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that Russia was not allowed to investigate the liner’s disaster in eastern Ukraine, and Moscow could recognize the results of the investigation if it would take full part in it. All the rockets, the engine from which was demonstrated by the Dutch commission to investigate the MH17 crash, were disposed of after 2011, the Russian Defense Ministry reported. Press Secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov has repeatedly stated that Russia categorically rejects accusations of involvement in the collapse of the Malaysian Boeing.
