Dutch investigators collect debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which crashed on July 17, 2014. Photo courtesy of Dutch Ministry of Defense.
HRABOVE, Ukraine, July 17 (UPI) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin told Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in a phone call that establishing an international tribunal to prosecute those responsible for the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 a year ago would be "premature" and "counterproductive."
An investigation of such international importance should instead be "thorough and objective," Putin said in the Thursday call, as the Netherlands leads two separate investigations into the July 17, 2014, crash that killed 298 people -- 193 of them Dutch citizens.
The Dutch Safety Board is expected to release its final report in October. A criminal investigation led by Australian, Malaysian, Ukrainian, Dutch and Belgian detectives will produce potential murder and war crimes' charges to those responsible – in the form of an outlined dossier.
Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council is expected to consider Tuesday establishing a joint criminal investigation into the crash. Russia has indicated that it will veto any such proposal on the grounds it would be unwarranted and biased.
Growing evidence suggests that the plane was shot down by a Russian-made missile provided to pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine. The Kremlin has denied it.
On Friday, News Corp. Australia released a new video that appears to show a handful of Russian-backed separatists controlling the rural village of Hrabove just after the plane crashed. News Corp. reports the video was shot by the rebels on a camcorder. The men initially seem to believe the plane was a Ukrainian air force fighter jet, then realize it was civilian airliner.
Armed conflict in the area persists between Russian separatist forces of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics --DPR and LPR respectively -- and the Ukrainian government.
Russia's aviation officials said they would prepare their own investigation of the crash, which would be released after the Dutch report.
"Russia has never pushed its own version of events, but has simply called for all possibilities to be considered," Oleg Storchevoy, deputy head of Russia's air transport agency Rosaviatsia, said Thursday at a Moscow press conference
He said Russia has handed over all available data, including information from radar stations.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the crash should not be characterized as a threat to international security.
"Projects relating to the creation of this tribunal, whose texts have now emerged, raises very many questions... The main thing is that this disaster is being qualified as a threat to international peace and security, although Resolution 2166 contain no such qualification," Lavrov said at a Moscow press conference Thursday.
The Telegraph in the UK reported this week that Russian separatists fighting in Donetsk likely fired a Buk SA-11 missile from a position south of the rebel-held town of Snizhne, after mistaking the Malaysian airliner for a Ukrainian plane. A Russian theory – widely rejected by Western experts – is that the Boeing 777 jet may have been downed by an air-to-air missile.
Meanwhile, relatives of 18 victims of the downed plane filed a lawsuit in a Chicago court against Igor Girkin, the former Russian intelligence officer in command of separatist forces at the time. The families argue that Girkin orchestrated the attack.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told Dutch magazine Elsevier in an interview published Thursday that the aircraft could not have been shot down without "a direct order from the highest political and military leadership" of Russia. Poroshenko went on to say that parts of eastern Ukraine under rebel control would eventually be reclaimed by Kiev, and that "a memorial to the 298 innocent victims of the barbarian act of terrorism" would be erected in Hrabove.
"With support from all free nations of the world we have enough strength to overcome it [the separatist threat}. The bits of Donbas, the entire Crimea -- will be back, in Ukraine. We will resurrect everything that has been destroyed, we will mend our wounds," Poroshenko said.