Published time: July 18, 2014
20:59
Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister
Anatoly Antonov (A still image from RT video)
Some Western states and Kiev
rushed to find Russian involvement in the MH17 crash having no evidence to back
their claims, Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister told RT. He invited Ukraine to
answer 10 questions to prove their commitment to an impartial probe.
Speaking to RT, Russia’s Deputy
Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov has criticized Western countries for jumping
to conclusions just “24 hours after the crash” while there is no evidence.
“They try to show to
the whole world that we are responsible for the crash. It is very strange that
without any evidence my colleagues from western media would like to find
somebody who is responsible for the crash,” Antonov said. “It
seems to me that this is part of information warfare which has been started
against the Russian Federation and armed forces.”
Instead of using the incident as
the pretext for groundlessly blaming one of the sides, the catastrophe over
Ukrainian sky should be used as a possibility to restart cooperation to “prevent
such tragedies in the future.”
“As for me, I don’t
want to use this opportunity to blame anybody. I would just like to raise few
questions for my colleagues from the armed forces of Ukraine,” Antonov
said. “I hope they try to answer the questions, it will be a good
opportunity for us to realize where we are, whether there is a possibility for
us to restart cooperation and to find who is really responsible for the
tragedy.”
“Answers for these
questions could help us find an opportunity to prevent such tragedies in the
future,”the Deputy Defense Minister said.
A picture taken on July 17, 2014
shows the wreckages of the malaysian airliner carrying 295 people from
Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur after it crashed, near the town of Shaktarsk. (AFP
Photo / Dominique Faget)
TEN QUESTIONS FOR THE UKRAINIAN
AUTHORITIES
1. Immediately after the tragedy,
the Ukrainian authorities, naturally, blamed it on the self-defense forces.
What are these accusations based
on?
2. Can Kiev explain in detail how
it uses Buk missile launchers in
the conflict zone? And why were these systems deployed there
in the first place, seeing as the self-defense forces don’t have any planes?
3. Why are the Ukrainian
authorities not doing anything to set up an international commission?
When will such a commission begin its work?
4. Would the Ukrainian Armed
Forces be willing to let international investigators see the inventory of their
air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles, including those used in SAM launchers?
5. Will the international
commission have access to tracking data from reliable sources regarding the
movements of Ukrainian warplanes on the day of the tragedy?
6. Why did Ukrainian air traffic
controllers allow the plane to deviate from
the regular route to the north, towards “the
anti-terrorist operation zone”?
7. Why was airspace over the
warzone not closed for civilian flights,
especially since the area was not entirely covered by radar navigation systems?
8. How can official Kiev comment
on reports in the social media, allegedly by a Spanish air traffic controller
who works in Ukraine, that there were two Ukrainian military planes flying
alongside the Boeing 777 over Ukrainian territory?
9. Why did Ukraine’s Security
Service start working with the recordings of communications between Ukrainian
air traffic controllers and the Boeing crew and with the data storage systems
from Ukrainian radars without waiting for international investigators?
10. What lessons has Ukraine
learned from a similar incident in
2001, when a Russian Tu-154 crashed into the Black Sea? Back then, the
Ukrainian authorities denied any involvement on the part of Ukraine’s Armed
Forces until irrefutable evidence proved official Kiev to be guilty.
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