Amsterdam: The missile which brought down Malaysian airlines MH17 plane over eastern Ukraine in 2014, came from a Russian military, said investigators probing the incident on Thursday.
The joint investigation team has come to the conclusion that “the BUK-TELAR that shot down MH17 came from 53rd Anti-aircraft Missile Brigade based in Kursk in Russia,” Wilbert Paulissen, one of the senior investigators told correspondents at a press conference in Utrecht in the Netherlands.
“The 53rd Brigade forms part of the Russian armed forces,” he said.
On July 17, 2014, the Malaysian airlines flight with 298 passengers and crew on board was blown in the sky over conflict-torn eastern Ukraine while it was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. Besides, Dutch there were 16 other nationalities on board including Australians, Britons, Malaysians and Indonesians
“We are convinced that our findings justify the conclusions that the BUK-TELAR which was used came from the 53rd Brigade which is part of the military of the Russian Federation,” Paulissen added. However, Russia has repeatedly denied any involvement in the downing of MH17 plane, putting the blame instead on Kiev.
