You're reading: Churkin: Russian specialists ready to join Boeing crash inquiry

New York City - Russian specialists are ready to join an inquiry into the Malaysia Airlines Boeing crash in Ukraine to be held under the ICAO aegis, according to Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin.

“A fully functional expert group should work on the crash scene under the ICAO aegis,” he said at a UN Security Council sitting.

Russia is prepared to give comprehensive support to the arrangement
and holding of an unbiased international investigation. “We are ready to
assign relevant specialists to this investigation,” the diplomat said.

“Everything must be done to provide complete security of the
international experts operating on the tragedy scene; they must enjoy
sort of ‘humanitarian corridors’,” Churkin underscored.

He also stressed there must be no hasty conclusions or politicized statements made until the end of the inquiry.

“Things we have been witnessing are totally impermissible. It seems
Kyiv is trying to use the shock the international community has suffered
in the Malaysian airliner crash for beefing up its punitive operation
in the east,” the diplomat presumed.

Churkin recalled the 2001 incident in which a Ukrainian air defense
missile shot down a Russian commercial jetliner above the Black Sea and
noted that Kyiv still refused to acknowledge its liability for that
tragedy in spite of the conclusions drawn in an international
investigation.

“Considering this record of Kyiv, it would be at least thoughtless to
let it play the first violin in the investigation of the July 17
disaster,” Churkin said.