Russian ECHR Envoy: Place From Where Missile Launched That Downed MH17 Was Controlled By Kiev

STRASBOURG (Sputnik) - Russia is confident that a place from where a missile that downed the MH17 plane was allegedly launched was controlled by Ukrainian forces, Russia’s representative to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Mikhail Vinogradov, said.

The ECHR on Wednesday started considering complaints of Ukraine and the Netherlands against Russia related to the case of the MH17 plane crash in Donbass in 2014.

The diplomat also said that Moscow regrets the refusal of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to combine its complaint against Kiev with the complaints of the Netherlands and Ukraine against Russia on the MH17 crash in eastern Ukraine in 2014 as such a move would serve proper justice. He expressed regret that the sides in the MH17 case had little time to present their arguments.

Vinogradov also called on the ECHR to reject combined complaints by Ukraine and the Netherlands against Russia, which the court is examining on Wednesday, for consideration on the merits.

According to the envoy, Russia has responded to 28 out of 29 from the Netherlands for legal assistance in the MH17 plane crash case, one more is in progress.

The Russian envoy said during his speech that the Dutch authorities are clearly misleading the ECHR, claiming that their requests were completely or partially left unanswered by Moscow.

Russia has handed over to the Netherlands volumes of materials on MH17 but the Dutch authorities did not use them since it might not fit into the version of that Moscow is responsible, he added.

Vinogradov stressed that actions in Donbass described in the complaints of the Netherlands and Ukraine to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on the MH17 crash case do not fall under Moscow’s jurisdiction. While speaking before the court in Strasbourg, he voiced his intention to outline the key provisions of article 1 of the Convention on Human Rights, in line with which Russia’s jurisdiction does not involve events in the complaints filed in by the Netherlands and Ukraine.

A Dutch complaint against Moscow on the ineffective investigation of the MH17 case in Russia is unfounded and should be rejected, Russia’s representative to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said. The diplomat said that while the Netherlands accuses Russia of the ineffective probe into the crash, The Hague itself interferes with the investigation in Russia. Moscow does not agree that legal proceedings are ineffective, Vinogradov added.

Russia will publish all documents sent to the Netherlands related to the case of the MH17 plane crash in Ukraine in 2014 so that everyone can see for themselves where the truth is, Vinogradov also said.

The Netherlands is abusing the right to appeal to court in relation to the complaint about Russia allegedly failing to provide legal assistance in the MH17 plane crash case, the envoy said. He also noted that Dutch prosecutors lied to the Russian competent authorities about the existence of a warrant for the arrest of Vladimir Tsemakh, a former Donbass militia commander and a key witness in the case.

Vinogradov expressed condolences to relatives of victims of the MH17 crash, which occurred in eastern Ukraine in 2014, adding that the incident was a great tragedy. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, en route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam, crashed on 17 July 2014 in eastern Ukraine amid military clashes between the Ukrainian government and local self-proclaimed republics. All 298 people on board, mostly Dutch citizens, died.

After the tragedy, Kiev and the self-proclaimed republics in Donbass put the blame for the crash on each other. The EU and the US, for their part, called Russia responsible for the incident and hit Moscow with sanctions. The Netherlands established a special Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to probe the crash but Russia was denied any access to the investigation. Then Moscow started its own investigation and handed over evidence to the JIT, including radar data showing that the plane had been shot down by a Ukrainian Buk missile that had been stored in Ukraine since 1986 and never went back to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The JIT did not pay attention to this evidence and continued to insist that the Buk missile had been owned by the Russian military.