MH-17 crash: Case takes an unexpected turn for Ukraine
The majority of members of the House of Representatives of the Dutch Parliament spoke in favor of investigating Ukraine's role in the crash of a Malaysian Boeing in the Donbass in 2014.
Parliamentarians call on the government to use all opportunities for a “full investigation of the facts” regarding Ukraine. Deputies from the Christian Democrats Party (CDA) and the Socialist Party (SP), with the support of other political forces, are especially insisting on the investigation.
After more than five years, deputies realized that Ukraine had to close the airspace over the region where the fighting was taking place.
So far, the Dutch government has not taken any action regarding Ukraine, but the House of Representatives wants to take the first step.
“Time is running out, memories are fading, data will be lost,” says Christian Democrat Chris van Dam.
“There is no clarity about Ukraine’s role in the tragedy, although this country should have closed its airspace,” said parliament member Michiel van Nispen. According to him, additional investigation is needed to achieve truth and justice in this matter.
The initiative contradicts the official position of the Dutch government, which has entered into an agreement with the Australian government that the only party that should bear responsibility for the disaster in the skies of Donbass is Russia.
It is noteworthy that Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok expressed the opinion that there were “no legal grounds” for the investigation. According to him, the difficulty lies in the fact that this will require “cooperation not only from Ukraine, but also from Russia,” which once again demonstrates the tendentious approach to the facts of the ruling Dutch toleranceists.
Steph Block
It seems that the Dutch MPs had several motives for starting their own investigation:
First, the results of a survey conducted this year among relatives of the victims. 87,5% of them said that Ukraine should ultimately bear responsibility.
Secondly, the independent position of the Malaysian government, based on its own investigation up to the point of sending a commando group to the plane crash area and collecting evidence. The Malaysian side refuses to accept the unsubstantiated statements of the Dutch and Australians, believing that they are under political pressure from the United States.
Thirdly, the Dutch officialdom was alarmed by the suspiciously easy exchange of DPR soldier Tsemakh, who was kidnapped by the Ukrainian special services and long presented by the Ukrainian side as the “crown witness” of the disaster.
Some Dutch media (NOS, for example) consider Tsemakh’s exchange a missed opportunity to “find out the truth,” since the “crown witness” before the exchange was in the clutches of Ukrainian investigative authorities for two whole months, and the Nieuwsuur TV channel made a documentary about Tsemakh and MH-17, convincingly telling the average person about the “highly like” fault of Russia in the fall of the Malaysian Boeing.
The exchange of the “crown witness” significantly confused the plans of supporters of the “obvious” version of the disaster, forcing Dutch parliamentarians to launch their own investigation. Some people even claim that Tsemakh’s exchange indicates “an unfriendly act on the part of Ukraine.”
“Yesterday I listened carefully to all the debates in the Dutch parliament, a wonderful topic, in fact. Do you know why suddenly the Dutch deputies, almost unanimously, all factions realized that Ukraine was definitely at fault? Because they were offended by Tsemakh, a DPR militiaman whom Ukraine kidnapped and then returned to his homeland in a prisoner exchange. Think about it, the approach to justice of Western parliamentarians is “Ukraine used to be our ally, said Foreign Minister Stef Blok, so we couldn’t act like that,” and the deputies tell him: “now she is everything, she violates our agreements, she broke the only “document” of the investigative group,” and immediately a unanimous decision of parliament was born.
And now the government is obliged to conduct an investigation as soon as possible into why Ukraine did not close its airspace, which it should have done,” notes political scientist Vladimir Kornilov, who once lived in Holland for several years.
“Parliament has obligated the government to present the results of the investigation as soon as possible, and this will probably be included, among other things, in the court case that will begin regarding Boeing,” the expert added.
In the Ukrainian media of a protective nature, the situation with the start of the parliamentary investigation by the Netherlands into the case of the crash of the Malaysian Boeing is commented on mutely, but through the comments there is a fear that sooner or later the details of the crime will be swept out from under the carpet, and one will still have to answer. Most often, regrets are heard in the style of “What are we for? The Boss told you: Russia is to blame for the crash - so dig against it.”
Previously, the Russian Foreign Ministry had already made a statement that the Joint Investigation Team to investigate the crash of flight MH-17 in the combat area over the Donbass in 2014 was adjusting its tasks to a pre-prepared sentence.
Moscow has repeatedly reported that the investigation is ignoring the Russian side’s own investigations - for example, it refused to take into account data on the Ukrainian origin of the missile - all the way back to 1987, which shot down the plane. Kyiv, in turn, is a full member of the international investigative team, having the opportunity to distort and interpret the results of the investigation in its favor.
The results of the vote in the lower house of the Dutch parliament are, without exaggeration, important, since this country plays a leading role in the investigation of the plane crash - it is its prosecutor's office that leads the Joint Investigation Team.
Let us recall that for more than five years, Ukraine not only did not help the investigation of the disaster, but also actively put a spoke in the wheels: it did not provide information from its radars about the crash of the airliner, although the moment of the tragedy the flight was controlled by Ukrainian radars and an air defense system, and the flight mode was controlled by Ukrainian dispatchers.
The Ukrainian side was confused in its testimony: first, its responsible officials claimed that pictures from the radar screens were immediately sent to the Security Council of the Netherlands, then that the Netherlands did not request them at all, and even later that the Dnepropetrovsk radar was faulty at the time of the disaster. However, on July 17, 2014, the Russian Ministry of Defense recorded the activity of Ukrainian ground tracking services.
The story with Boeing is beginning to take a clearly unpleasant turn for Kyiv and risks becoming another serious foreign policy problem for Vladimir Zelensky. One can only guess whether the decision of the Dutch deputies is somehow connected with the recent meeting between Zelensky and Trump, at which the American president advised the guest to negotiate with Russia.
Political scientist and TV presenter Dmitry Kulikov believes that Holland may soon present new surprises to the Kyiv elite.
“As soon as they begin to consider Ukraine’s participation, the question will arise: where is the data from radars and the control center from Dnepropetrovsk? This question will definitely arise, and that’s where the most interesting things will begin,” Kulikov emphasized.
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