Prosecutors of the international investigation team in Netherlands who were investigating the downing of the flight MH17 in 2014 in Ukraine, announced that they had concluded that there were “serious indications” of Vladimir Putin’s involvement.
But they said evidence implicating Putin and other Russian officials was not sufficiently specific to lead to a criminal conviction and that they would continue the investigation without further prosecution.
“The investigation has reached its limits,” said the prosecutor Digna van Boetselaar at a press conference in The Hague. “The findings are insufficient to prosecute new suspects.”
In November, a Dutch court convicted two Russian former intelligence agents and a Ukrainian separatist leader of murder for helping to coordinate Russian BUK missile system that was used to shoot down the aircraft. The three men who were convicted in absentia remain at large.
At the time the plane was shot down, Ukrainian forces were fighting Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk province.
But in the broader context of sentencing the three men in November, the Dutch court ruled that Russia had de facto “total control” of separatist forces in Donetsk since May 2014.
Prosecutors announced today that they could not identify the specific responsibilities of soldiers from the Kursk-based 53rd Brigade who fired the missile that downed the plane.
They cited an intercom between Russian officials in 2014 as evidence that Putin’s approval was needed before the separatists made their request for equipment.
They additionally presented a conversation Putin himself had in 2017 with the Russian-appointed commander-in-chief of Lugansk province in which they discuss the military situation and the prisoner exchange.
Source: News Beast
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