﻿﻿ Malaysian Prime Minister: there is no evidence of Russia’s involvement in the flight MH17 crash / News / News agency Inforos
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Mahathir Mohamad criticized the results of the investigation into the shotdown of the Malaysian Airlines plane in the Donetsk region


There is too much politics involved in the investigation of the crash of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing in Ukraine in 2014, said the country’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, as quoted by the Malay Mail newspaper on Friday.

The investigation was focused not so much on finding the truth, but rather on pinning the blame on Russia, he said. “They are accusing Russia, but where is the evidence? We know that the missile that brought down the plane was a Russian-type missile, but it could have been made in Ukraine,” he pointed out during a news conference in Tokyo.

Mohamad described the Russian military as “disciplined and competent people” who could easily understand that MH17 was a passenger plane. “Therefore, I doubt that it is the disciplined party that is responsible for launching the missile,” he concluded, adding that Malaysia should have taken part in examination of the black boxes, but “for some reason” it was not allowed to.

Nor were Russian experts allowed to participate in the investigation, even though they could have provided substantial assistance. In this connection, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow could recognize the outcome of the investigation only if it were an equal party of it. “Russia was not allowed to participate in the international investigation of the Malaysian plane crash, so Moscow does not have reasons to trust it,” he declared last May.

Apparently, those who from the very beginning decided to accuse Moscow of the tragedy did not need Russia’s involvement and establishment of the truth. Yet the international commission led by the Netherlands has failed to produce any strong evidence of Russia’s responsibility for the airliner’s crash after almost five years of investigation. Its report states only that the BUK anti-aircraft system that shot down the Boeing was brought from Russia and then delivered back.

The official Kiev accuses pro-Russian fighters in the Donetsk region, but they argue that they don’t have BUK systems that allow targeting aircraft at such a height. Moscow, in turn, accuses the investigators of being prejudiced, since their conclusions are based only on information received from Ukraine, while the data of other parties is completely ignored.

Notably, experts of Almaz Antey, the leading producer of anti-aircraft systems, including BUK, maintain that the aircraft was shot from the area controlled by the Ukrainian army. But the investigators ignored this information. Moreover, the Russian Defense Ministry says that all missiles of the type being investigated were disposed of after 2011. So it is no coincidence that the Russian President’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said repeatedly that Moscow vehemently denies any allegations of its involvement in the MH17 crash.

Recently, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said that the Netherlands did not want to share internal documents related to the crash because they wanted to conceal certain information, whitewashing Kiev and pointing the finger at Russia.

“Strong reluctance of the Netherlands to release internal correspondence suggests that the country wants to conceal crucial information that could shed a different light on the plane crash and makes every effort to take the heat off Kiev and lay the blame entirely on Russia,” she said.

On July 17, 2014, the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flight MH17, on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed near Donetsk, killing all the 298 people that were on board. Most of them were Dutch citizens.

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