MH17 inquiry criticizes Ukraine for 2014 crash

The Dutch Safety Board investigating last year's crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 has criticized the Ukrainian authorities for not closing the airspace above the country’s volatile east.

The chairman of the board, Tjibbe Joustra, on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian officials for allowing civilian planes to go on flying above the eastern part of the country that has been witnessing deadly clashes between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russia forces.

"We have concluded as a precaution there was sufficient reason for the Ukrainian authorities to close the airspace above the eastern part of their country," he said.

His remarks came as the panel released its final report on the July 2014 crash that took 298 lives while the plane was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

The plane went down due to the explosion of a warhead outside the airplane against the left-hand side of the cockpit, the official probe said, noting that the warhead fits the kind of missile that is installed in the Russian-made BUK surface-to-air missile system.

The maps that were shown to reporters also indicated that the location of the missile's launch site was a place near Donetsk, which is controlled by pro-Russia forces.

Russia’s reaction

Russia disputed the findings of the inquiry, with the Russian missile maker Almaz-Antey dismissing the results of the report.

According to Yan Novikov, the director of Almaz-Antey, the company has conducted its own probe into the incident and the results of “the experiment completely dispute the conclusions of the Dutch commission about the type of the rocket and the launch site.”

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has also denounced the Dutch report as biased. 

"It's a source of regret that, despite all Russia's repeated and lengthy attempts to organize the investigation in such a way that it is comprehensive and unbiased, and for it to consider all the information we have ... there is an obvious attempt to draw a biased conclusion, and carry out political orders," he was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies. 

Russia says Ukrainian forces had downed the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777.

Ukraine blames Russia 

Meanwhile, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has accused Russia's security services of being behind the deadly incident.

The missile systems could only have been operated by "trained Russian servicemen," he told a televised cabinet meeting, adding, “We are certain that this (operation) was conducted from territory that was only under the Russian fighters' control.”

The head of Kiev's part of the probe also described the incident "a planned act of terror” carried out from the areas that are not under control of Kiev.

"This was a Russian BUK-1 missile," Gennadiy Zubko, who is also the Ukrainian deputy prime minister, told reporters in Kiev.

The plane crash happened as tensions between Kiev and Moscow had been escalating over the unrest in eastern Ukraine’s mostly Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.

Ukraine accuses Russia of instigating deadly unrest in the region, which broke out in April 2014 after pro-Russia protests were met with heavy crackdown by Kiev.

Malaysia reaction

Malaysia also reacted to the Dutch probe, with its Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai saying in a statement that the country “remains single-minded in our pursuit of decisive action that will lead to prosecution of the trigger-happy criminals.”

Malaysian Premier Najib Razak, for his part, said his government would not stop its efforts "until those behind this heinous act are made to pay for their crimes."

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