Kremlin Says Unaware of Australian Lawsuit Against Russia Over MH17 Crash

Moscow has no information on reports with regard to a lawsuit against Russia over the Boeing-777 crash in eastern Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Saturday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The Sydney law firm LHD Lawyers was reported to file a lawsuit seeking $7.2 million on behalf of five families of Australian victims against Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier in the day.

"We do not have any information [on the issue] so far," Peskov told RIA Novosti.

Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 crashed with 298 people on board on July 17, 2014, in eastern Ukraine after being shot down while en route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam. Kiev and independence supporters in Donbass have blamed each other for the downing of the MH17 plane.

Dutch investigators published a report in October 2015 claiming that the Malaysia Airlines aircraft appeared to have been downed using a Russia-produced Buk surface-to-air missile system. It did not identify the exact location from where the missile was fired.

The Russian arms manufacturer that builds Buk missile systems, Almaz-Antey, conducted a separate probe into the crash, finding that the missile that hit the plane could only have been launched from the region of Zaroshchenske, controlled by Kiev forces at the time of the incident.