Ukraine: Vladimir Putin faces calls to come clean on MH17 deaths

Calls are growing for Russia to admit its role in downing MH17 which killed almost 300 people in 2014.

The MH17 crash site in the village of Hrabove in Ukraine in November 2014. Picture: AFP

Iran’s admission that it accidentally shot down a Ukrainian jet has led to growing calls in Russia for President Vladimir Putin to acknowledge Moscow’s culpability for the destruction of a Malaysia Airlines plane in 2014.

Investigators say separatists backed by the Kremlin used a Buk missile supplied by the Russian military to bring down Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people, including 38 Australians, on board after apparently mistaking it for a Ukrainian warplane.

Four men with ties to the Russian military have been named as murder suspects and the Dutch-led investigation team said in November that recordings of telephone calls could implicate Vladislav Surkov, one of Mr Putin’s closest advisers. Moscow denies any involvement.

Vladimir Varfolomeyev, the deputy editor of the Echo of Moscow radio station, said this week: “It takes a special skill to look dishonourable even in ­comparison to the Iranian ­ayatollahs.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin. Picture: AFP

Margarita Simonyan, the head of RT, the Kremlin-funded news channel, also appeared to take an unexpected swipe at Mr Putin, saying there were two possible responses when a ­country commits a catastrophic error.

One was to “never confess to anything and never apologise for anything”, a position she said was adhered to by officials in most countries. The other was to own up to the mistake “like Iran”.

Some Russian opposition figures dismissed comparisons between the shooting down of the planes over Tehran and Ukraine.

Arkady Babchenko, who made headlines when he faked his death in 2018, said Iran’s leaders had calculated they could deflect public anger by blaming the accident on US aggression.

“If Putin had shot down MH17 over Moscow while defending it from the accursed Americans, he would also have admitted his mistake, don’t worry,” Mr Babchenko, 42, wrote in an online post.

The trial of the MH17 suspects begins in The Netherlands in March.

The accused, Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov, and Leonid Kharchenko, are believed to be in Russia or eastern Ukraine and there is little chance that any will appear.

The Times