As authorities investigating the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight 17 prepare to brief the families of victims on their findings, the Russian Federation is continuing to resist efforts to establish an international tribunal to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov has insisted the creation of a tribunal would be premature. This signals the Kremlin's intention to continue to block efforts at the United Nations to prosecute those responsible for shooting down the passenger plane over eastern Ukraine last year.
In July, Russia wielded its veto power at the United Nations Security Council to block a resolution that would have created a tribunal with powers to prosecute those responsible.
The comments from Mr Gatilov come three weeks before the Dutch Safety Board presents its final report on the circumstances of the crash, which claimed the lives of all 298 people on board, including 38 Australians.
The report is believed to include evidence the plane, which was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17 last year, was shot down by a Russian-made BUK missile, fired by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.
"The setting up of any tribunal is premature at this stage, as the current task is to finish investigation into this tragic incident," Mr Gatilov told reporters in Moscow overnight.
Mr Gatilov said Russia was "ready to actively participate, and is already actively participating" in the investigation.
But he said "everything that was connected with activity over a UN Security Council resolution on the setting up of a tribunal had a serious political connotation".
"Our experts have visited the Netherlands, met with their Dutch colleagues. We raised a number of issues to which we are yet to receive sufficiently convincing answers," he said.
It has also emerged that officials from the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic claim to have collected another 2500 fragments from the crash site, as well as passenger's luggage and other debris.
"The collection process is almost complete at this point and we express our readiness to officially hand over the fragments to the Dutch side, as we believe it is absolutely necessary to introduce them to the investigation," Andrey Spivak, the DPR's acting chief prosecutor, said last week.
The Dutch Safety Board in June sent a draft of its final report to six nations, including Australia.
Those nations were given 60 days to comment while the Dutch Safety Board said relatives of those killed would be briefed before the report is released on October 13.
The Dutch public prosecutor, Fred Westerbeke, last month said investigators had found seven "considerable fragments of some size ... probably from a BUK (surface-to-air) missile system" at the crash site.
Russia has denied any involvement in the shooting down of the airliner.
Share
