Russia withdraws from consultations with the Netherlands and Austria over MH17 plane crash
Russia withdrew from trilateral consultations with the Netherlands and Australia on the crash of Malaysian Boeing over the Donbas in July 2014, said the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Ministry stated that the "hostile acts by the Netherlands have made any continuation of the trilateral consultations and our participation senseless," Earlier, the Netherlands filed an interstate complaint against Russia in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) over the crash of flight MH17.
"We consider this step another blow to Russian-Dutch relations and the demonstration by The Hague of firm intention contrary to common sense to continue the vicious path of placing responsibility for what happened in the skies over the Donbas solely on Russia," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The Ministry stressed that Russia, having agreed to consultations in 2018, "has agreed that such consultations will contribute to determining the true causes of the plane crash based on the facts. But Australia and the Netherlands have obviously not tried to understand what really happened in summer 2014, but rather just wanted to secure a confession from Russia and compensation for the victims' relatives."
Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok expressed deep regret over Russia's decision. According to him, the Netherlands is in favor of continuing negotiations, but at the same time is not ready to abandon other methods of achieving justice in the case of the disaster.
The trial in the case of the Boeing MH17 crash has continued in the Netherlands since the beginning of March. Three Russian citizens, Sergei Dubinsky, Igor Girkin and Oleg Pulatov, as well as Ukrainian citizen Leonid Kharchenko have the status of the accused. They were also absent during the first meeting in March. None of them participates in the process personally and only Pulatov is represented by lawyers.