MOSCOW, July 19 (RIA Novosti) — Kiev is not taking action to form an international commission to investigate Thursday’s crash of Malaysia Airlines plane in eastern Ukraine, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Saturday.
«What are the reasons for the inaction of Ukrainian authorities in forming an international commission, when will this commission begin to work? The whole international community is awaiting that," Antonov said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV channel.
On Thursday, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing-777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed near the town of Torez in Ukraine’s Donetsk Region with 298 people on board. All passengers and crew members, including 85 children, died.
Kiev blamed independence supporters in the turbulent Donetsk Region for downing the passenger plane with a surface-to-air missile. The leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic said local militia did not have the required technologies to shoot as high at 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) in the air.
The United Nations and other international organizations, as well as the heads of several countries and the Russian Foreign Ministry, have called for a transparent and unbiased international investigation into the accident.
Ukrainian authorities and Malaysia Airlines have already started the investigation, and the OSCE monitoring team in Ukraine has arrived at the site. The Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), Interpol, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are also planning to join the investigation.
