Amid reports that the Dutch-led investigation into the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine will blame Russia-backed rebels, Moscow continues to push other explanations and fight against calls for an international criminal tribunal.



Friday marks one year since the tragedy, which killed all 298 passengers and crew on board. The Netherlands, Malaysia and Australia this month have sought the creation of a UN tribunal to prosecute suspects.

Speaking with the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, on Thursday, Russian president Vladimir Putin argued against the “prematureness and counterproductiveness” of creating such a tribunal, according to a Kremlin statement. “At the same time, it was stressed that leaks to the media of different versions of events with an openly political character are inadmissible,” the statement said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Oleg Storchevoi, deputy head of Russia’s state air transport agency, said Kiev’s ‘greed’ is to blame for the tragedy. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

Putin was apparently referring to a report on Wednesday that a draft of the findings of the Dutch Safety Board, which is leading the MH17 investigation, blames a surface-to-air missile fired from a village under the control of Russia-backed separatists.

It also said that unlike some airlines that avoided flying over eastern Ukraine, Malaysia Airlines was not reading warnings from other countries about potential dangers involving conflict zones. The final report is expected to be released in October.

On Thursday, a lawyer for the relatives of 17victims, including six Britons, said they had filed an $850m civil suit in a Chicago court against Igor Girkin, a Russian citizen who was the top commander of separatist forces when the tragedy occurred. A post on a social media account linked to Girkin bragged shortly after MH17 came down that rebels had shot down an AN-26 transport plane, but this was soon deleted as it became clear that the aircraft was a civilian airliner.

Speaking with Gazeta.ru, Girkin criticised the families for “assessing the lives of their relatives in terms of money”, but declined to comment on the downing of MH17.

Lawyer Floyd Wisner, who brought the lawsuit, said that it had “nothing to do with the money”, but was rather meant to put pressure on the UN and Russia to bring those responsible for the disaster to justice, especially in light of Moscow’s resistance to the creation of an international tribunal.

“[The relatives] want answers, and we believe Girkin has answers,” Wisner said. “This lawsuit could shed light on the families’ concerns, particularly over slow-moving diplomatic measures.”

While western journalists have gathered evidence that separatists shot down MH17 with a Buk missile, with British blogger Eliot Higgins even using photographs published online to trace a suspected Buk launcher from Russia to eastern Ukraine, Moscow has thrown up a variety of explanations implicating the Ukrainian side.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Emergencies ministry members at the site of the crash. Photograph: Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters

At a press conference on Thursday, Oleg Storchevoi, deputy head of Russia’s state air transport agency, said western investigators were only taking into account facts leading to the “necessary result”, and that Russia had submitted evidence supporting other explanations, including an air-to-air missile or a surface-to-air missile launched from Ukrainian-controlled territory. He left without taking questions from the press, arguing that he couldn’t comment until the full report is published.

Both the Russian defence ministry and the investigative committee have previously said the Boeing 777 was likely downed by a Ukrainian Su-25 ground attack fighter jet, an explanation that seems implausible given both the Su-25’s low operating ceiling and the fact that no air-to-air fighting has occurred over eastern Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Almaz-Antey, the Russian maker of the Buk surface-to-air missile, gave a presentation in June suggesting that MH17 was brought down by Ukrainian forces using one of its missiles. On Thursday, Storchevoi similarly argued that a Buk could only have been fired from near the village of Zaroshchenske, rather than from separatist-controlled Snizhne, or Russian radar would have detected it. It is not clear which side was in control of Zaroshchenske at the time of the disaster.

Storchevoi also said Kiev’s “greed” was to blame for the catastrophe, arguing that “obviously the Ukrainian side didn’t want to lose large profits by closing its airspace” over eastern Ukraine.