Following the announcement made by the investigation team, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte decided to cut short his trip to India to join the cabinet for talks over the new findings, Dutch news agency ANP said Thursday.
Commenting on the newly-released data, Maja Kocijancic, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said that the European Commission supported the international probe into the MH17 crash and called on Russia to cooperate with the investigators.
"The European Union fully supports the work of the Joint Investigation Team in relation to the downing of the MH17 almost four years ago… Today in addition to the earlier findings the Joint Investigation Team further concluded that the BUK installation belonged beyond doubt to the Russian armed forces and stated that the Russian Federation had not provided answers to its questions about this BUK installation, and in view of these facts we call on the Russian Federation to fully cooperate with all efforts to establish accountability for the downing of MH17," Kocijancic told a briefing.
Earlier in the day, head of the Dutch National Police's Central Crime Investigation department Wilbert Paulissen said that the missile, which downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine in 2014, was launched by the Buk TELAR belonging to the Russian Armed Forces.
At the same time, Dutch Chief Prosecutor Fred Westerbeke stated that the investigation team would not disclose the evidence allegedly uncovered.
READ MORE: Missile Allegedly Used to Down MH17 Invisible Due to Speed — Dutch Prosecutors
Back in 2016, the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team already presented the initial results of the criminal investigation into the crash, claiming that the airliner was downed by a Buk surface-to-air missile launcher which was delivered from the "territory of the Russian Federation to Ukraine."
Malaysian Airlines' Boeing 777 crashed in eastern Ukraine in July 2014 during its flight to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam, while all 298 passengers and crew members on board were killed.