Russia must “cease its lies” about the downing of a airliner that killed nearly 300 civilians in the early days of the conflict in Ukraine, a top State Department official said Thursday.
“It is time for Russia to cease its lies and account for its role in the shoot down,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Thursday evening.
In 2014, an airplane carrying 298 people was shot down by a Russia military anti-aircraft weapons system, according to international investigators. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government accused the Joint Investigative Team of smearing the Kremlin for political purposes, but Nauert dismissed that charge.
“The United States has complete confidence in the findings of the Joint Investigation Team,” she said, hours after a Dutch prosecutor unveiled the probe’s conclusion. “Today’s announcement confirms and adds detail to what we have said from the earliest days of this tragedy: MH17 was shot down by a Russian-made BUK surface-to-air missile fired from territory in eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia and Russia-led forces.”
The investigative effort identified a specific origin for the surface-to-air missile that downed the Malaysian Airlines passenger jet. “[T]he Buk-TELAR that shot down MH17 came from the 53rd Antiaircraft Missile Brigade based in Kursk in Russia,” investigator Wilbert Paulissen said, per RFERL, a U.S.-backed outlet in Europe. “The 53rd Brigade is part of Russia’s armed forces.”
Russian officials expressed ‘regret’ at being blamed for the MH17 incident. “It is nothing but an allegation aimed at tarnishing our country’s image on the international stage,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Russia, which has annexed Crimea from Ukraine, denies any involvement in supporting the separatist forces fighting the Ukrainian central government in the eastern part of the country. But Russia’s top diplomat has acknowledged their role in the conflict at least once. He justified their actions as a necessary defense of the ethnic Russians who supported the ousted Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych.
“Had we not done what we did, we would have betrayed our civilization which our forefathers developed over centuries and who then spread it over vast territories,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last year.
Nauert called on Russia to comply with a United Nations Security Council resolution that condemned the shoot-down.
“We remain confident in the ability of the Dutch criminal justice system to prosecute those responsible in a manner that is fair and just,” she said. “We again extend our deepest sympathies to the families and friends of the victims and call for justice on behalf of the 298 innocent civilians who lost their lives on that day.”
