The Netherlands Flight Safety Fund launched an investigation into Ukraine’s refusal to close airspace in the Donbas when a Malaysian Airlines passenger plane crashed there.
Dutch Foreign Ministry intends to find out why the sky remained open in the combat zone, which at that time had been going on for several months, as reported by The Eastern Herald.
A spokeswoman for the Netherlands prosecutor’s office, Brechtier van de Mosdeyk, said that the investigation is being conducted separately from the criminal process for the plane crash.
In June, Dutch lawyer Boudewijn van Eijck, who represents the interests of the accused Russian citizen Oleg Pulatov, said that The Hague agreed to study the circumstances under which Kyiv did not close the airspace for civil aviation in the conflict zone. According to him, the investigation may take up to six months.
Earlier, this issue was repeatedly raised by the Russian side. Alexei Paramonov, director of the First European Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, noted that the Joint Investigation Group (JIT) did not conduct a real investigation of Ukraine’s role in this tragedy.
