SMRs and AMRs

Friday, July 24, 2015

Russia’s Empty Gesture on the Downed Malaysian Jet

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD, NYT
JULY 23, 2015

A year after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard, Russia has asked the United Nations Security Council and the International Civil Aviation Organization to take a more active role in investigating the incident and bringing those responsible to justice.

On the face of it, that looks like an accommodating gesture from the government that is backing the Ukrainian separatists believed to have fired the fatal missile on July 17, 2014, and that probably supplied it to them. It’s not.

The real goal of the draft resolution Russia proposed on Monday at the Security Council is to thwart a Dutch-led criminal investigation of what happened and a Western call for a United Nations-backed tribunal.

The Netherlands, Malaysia, Australia, Belgium and Ukraine are expected to allege that the plane was shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile fired by Russian-backed separatists or Russian soldiers, and they have asked the Security Council to set up a tribunal to prosecute those responsible.

(More here.)

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