The establishment of an international tribunal to deal with the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) crash in Ukraine would be premature, says Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.
“The initiative by a number of Western countries on adopting a UN Security Council resolution under Article 7 of the [UN] Charter to establish an international tribunal to deal with the MH17 crash is obviously premature and counterproductive,” Zakharova said at a news briefing on Thursday.
“The existing examples of international tribunals set up under Article 7 of the UN Charter confirm that their operations are inefficient, costly, extremely unproductive, and extremely politicized in nature,” she said.
Any judicial prosecution exercised based on an unscrupulous investigation is “doomed to failure,” she said.
“We are convinced that what counts most at the moment is not to hastily set up an international tribunal on MH17 in any possible way and at any cost but conduct a quality investigation into the Boeing’s crash,” Zakharova said.
A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed in a military conflict area near the village of Hrabove in the eastern part of the Donetsk region on July 17, 2014, killing all the 283 passengers and 15 crewmembers.
The most likely theory of the crash that is currently being investigated is a missile attack, although no official conclusions have yet been made public.
