MH17 Findings: Dutch Safety Board Says Russian Buk Missile Took Down Plane

The West and Ukraine blamed Russian forces for the incident, while Russia said it’s the fault of Ukrainian forces.

A 15-month inquiry in to the disintegration of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 within the skies over japanese Ukraine has concluded in that the aircraft was more than likely struck by a Russian-made missile, Dutch air accident investigators stated on Tues.

The 283 passengers and 15 crew members on the flight, which was en route to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from Amsterdam, came from about a dozen countries; 193 of the passengers were Dutch. “They are fundamentally wrong, the lack of logic there is beyond comparison”, deputy head of Russia’s federal air transport agency Oleg Storchevoi said, in a televised news conference Wednesday, according to the Associated Press (AP). “Nobody gave any thought to a possible threat to civil aviation”, said board chairman Tjibbe Joustra.

The result of the impact and massive pressure wave instantly killed three crew in the cockpit, DSB said, adding that a “large number of fragments from the warheads were found in their bodies”.

Two-thirds of the 298 people who were killed were Dutch, and the Netherlands is conducting the investigation. At a speed of 2,200 miles per hour (3,500 km/h), the missile did not take long to reach its target, and its warhead detonated to the left side and above the cockpit.

Novikov said the missile was “for sure” fired from Zaroshchenskoye village in southeastern Ukraine controlled by Ukrainian military forces rather than by insurgents.

“The BUK missile is developed and made in Russian Federation”, a source told Volkskrant. “Almost all operators were flying over that area, and why?”

State-controlled Russian firm Almaz-Antey showed videos of a BUK missile being exploded close to the nose of a decommissioned Ilyushin plane.

The Joint Investigation Team is led by the Dutch national police and prosecutor, with the participation of specialists from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, Ukraine.

He emphasized, however, that Russian Federation agrees with the investigation’s conclusion that Ukraine should have closed its eastern airspace before the crash. Still, the Russian state arms producer that makes the BUK missile disputed those findings.

But who fired the missile, and from where, remains a matter for a Dutch criminal investigation.

“I think what has been very clear is that the situation that happened over the Ukraine, I think more could have been done sharing information and intelligence to ensure that the operation of aircraft was safe over that path”, he said.