The investigators stopped short of apportioning blame but were in no doubt that the plane was brought down by a Russian-made BUK surface-to-air-missile.
Advertisement
Missile fragments found in the cockpit crew’s bodies, as well as paint traces, enabled investigators to identify the Buk, Joustra said.
The Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK) said on Tuesday, after the report was unveiled, that it had proposed that plane crashes with large casualty numbers be investigated by worldwide commissions under the auspices of the global Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
The Russian company also claimed that the missile was not fired from territory controlled by the rebels, but came from the town of Zaroshenske, which was under the control of the Ukrainian government at that time.
‘This report, from the Dutch Air Safety Board, will not provide all the answers to all of their questions.
Mr. Joustra said nations in armed conflict should put more effort into the safety of their airspace.
The crash of flight MH17 was caused by the detonation of a 9N314M-type warhead launched from the eastern part of Ukraine using a BUK missile system.
The Dutch report makes 11 recommendations, aiming to improve safety for civilian aircraft.
When pressed by a journalist on Tuesday about the reports that Zaroshenske was in fact in rebel hands at the time of the crash, Novikov said it was outside his competence to comment on “who occupied what” at the time. It said the Boeing 777, carrying 298 people, should not have been flying over a war zone between Ukrainian forces and separatists backed by Moscow after departing from Amsterdam.
The plane broke apart in the air, with the tail falling to earth first and then the central section with the engines, which landed upside down and caught fire.
Both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries have BUK missiles in their arsenals.
“There was sufficient reason for the Ukrainian authorities to close the air space above the eastern part of their country”, Joustra said, adding that at least 16 Ukrainian military aircraft had been shot down in the area in the months before the MH17 disaster.
The prime minister called on Russian Federation to cooperate fully with the ongoing criminal investigation into the disaster, which is being led by the Dutch public prosecution department.
The downing of MH17 threw the global spotlight back on the uprising in eastern Ukraine and was followed by a toughening of Western sanctions against Russian Federation.
Klimkin said Kiev may once again bring the issue to the UN Security Council to work on the possibility of a special tribunal to judge those responsible for the crash.
Advertisement
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday said there were “many, many unusual things” about the investigation, including the failure to get the worldwide Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to head it.
