Russia denies involvement in MH17 downing, defends rebels

By P. Prem Kumar

MOSCOW 

Russia's ambassador to Malaysia has reiterated that her country had no involvement in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, accusing neighbor Ukraine of possessing a sophisticated missile launcher that is alleged to have brought down the plane.

Lyudmila G. Vorobyeva said that pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk - who the U.S. and Ukraine have claimed downed the airplane - only have portable missiles in their possession.

"The rebels have no means to shoot down a civilian plane. They also do not have the weapon to do so," she told a packed news conference in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday.

“What they do have is a portable weapon which can shoot up to 5,000 meters. It is incapable of targeting or shooting a commercial airliner flying at 30,000 feet [9144 meters],” she added.

The Boeing 777-200, en-route to Amsterdam from Kuala Lumpur, is understood to have been shot down Thursday near Hrabove in Donetsk, Ukraine - about 40 kilometers from the Ukrainian-Russian border.

The ambassador said that the separatist group is not trained to use the sophisticated BUK ground-to-air missile system that Ukraine alleges was used in the attack, and that the Russian military has never supplied anything more to them than the portable machine.

“I am 100 percent sure that the Russian government is in full control of the military. No such weapons could have gone to the rebels,” she stressed. 

Russia has said that is has evidence that Ukraine's military had positioned a sophisticated missile launcher near the crash site in eastern Ukraine, and that one of its fighters was tailing the Boeing 777-200 some 3.5 kilometers away before the tragedy.

Ukraine, however, denies this, with President Petro Poroshenko - who has called the downing of MH17 an act of “terrorism" – saying the Russian allegation simply is not true.

“Everybody knows that in this period of time when the tragedy happened all Ukrainian planes were on the ground [in the area],” he has told media.

The governor of Donetsk on Tuesday asked people to leave the area as violence between government forces and pro-Russian separatists is ongoing. 

Ambassador Vorobyeva said Russian military experts have confirmed the presence of the Sukhoi-25 jet of the Ukrainian military force following the MH17 moments before it crashed, killing all 298 people on board.

The Sukhoi-25 is said to be capable of firing air-to-air missiles at close range, as well, she added.

Vorobyeva said that the accusations are further evidence that western media - led by the United States government - has “demonized” Russia and its President Vladimir Putin.

"They are all saying that there is evidence for Russia's involvement in the MH17 disaster. Where is the tangible evidence that Russia was involved? All the finger-pointing and accusations have been made without any proof," she said.

"When the United States attacked Iraq in 2003, they claimed it was because the country and its leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. However, until today, the world still awaits the evidence which justified the assault."

Vorobyeva said a photograph of a BUK missile system and an alleged phone conversation between rebels circulated on social networking sites are not real and have been proven to be fake.

"Thus, we are not going to play the game which our Western counterparts are doing, which is blaming and accusing someone without any actual proof," she said, adding that Russia has consistently been calling for a thorough investigation into who was responsible.

She noted that while "western" media, the U.S. and Ukraine have alleged that evidence at the MH17 crash site had been tampered with - including the plane's black boxes - Malaysian experts who took custody of the black boxes from the rebels had confirmed that the flight recorders had not been tampered with in any way.

She thanked the Malaysian government for remaining neutral on the issue, and not pointing fingers at any one party.

www.aa.com.tr/en