Russia denies findings on ‘Malaysia’

Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that Russia rejects the findings of an international joint panel investigating the 2014 downing of a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine, which concluded that the plane was shot down by a Russian missile.He was speaking at a conference in St. Petersburg on Friday evening during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum event. “I was not included in the investigative team, so Russia does not recognize the findings of a team to which it does not belong,” Putin said.

In response to a question about whether the missile that hit the plane was Russian, Putin said: “Of course not, and there are various allegations, including that the missile was Ukrainian.” On Thursday, an international joint investigation team revealed that the missile that led to the downing of the Malaysian plane in Ukrainian airspace was a Russian “Buk” missile. The plane crashed on July 17, 2014 on a flight from Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, carrying 283 passengers in addition to 15 crew members.