Russia slams lack of cooperation in MH17 crash probe

Russian authorities on Monday slammed Dutch investigators probing the Malaysia Airlines MH17 plane crash after they refused to cooperate with experts from Moscow.

"The Russian side has repeatedly expressed its disappointment over the fact that there is a lack of needed cooperation and involvement of Russian specialists in the investigations," the Russian president's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said on the eve of the presentation of the Dutch Safety Board's final report of the crash.

The spokesman also said that the investigators had ignored for unknown reasons some facts about the crash provided by Moscow.

On July 17, 2014, the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 crashed while flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur over the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, where hostilities between government troops and local separatists were taking place.

All 298 people on board, mostly citizens of the Netherlands, were killed in the accident.

Ukraine has accused insurgents of downing the airliner with the latest anti-aircraft equipment supplied by Russia.

The separatists denied the accusations, saying that they did not possess missile systems capable of reaching targets at high altitudes and accused the Ukrainian military of shooting the plane down.

In July 2015, Russia vetoed a UN Security Council draft resolution to establish an international tribunal to prosecute the perpetrator of the crash.

Russian Almaz-Antei missile manufacturer said it had blown up a missile beneath a de-commissioned Boeing plane to prove that the newest Russian equipment was not involved, and would present the test results on Tuesday after the publication of the Dutch Safety Board report.

In June, Almaz-Antei presented a report claiming that the airplane had been shot down by a Buk-M1 anti-aircraft missile system from the territory controlled by the Ukrainian military, and said that Russia has stopped producing Buk-M1 missiles since 1999, only selling the remaining systems to foreign clients.