ST. PETERSBURG. May 25 (Interfax) - Moscow does not trust the findings of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) probing the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) in Donbas in 2014 because Russia was not involved in this investigation, President Vladimir Putin said.
"Unfortunately, we were not admitted to a full-scale investigation and therefore have no grounds for fully trusting the findings of this investigation. We are not taking part in it," Putin said at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday.
The JIT has not taken any of Russia's arguments into consideration, Putin said. "If there is no proper investigation, of course it will be hard for us to accept the conclusions of a commission working without our participation," Putin said.
He said he could not understand why the investigation ignored the fact that Ukraine failed to comply with the ICAO rules in that it did not close its airspace to the MH17.
Putin also recalled that Ukraine had downed a Russian plane en route from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk over the Black Sea in 2001 but never admitted this. "Unfortunately, we have a negative record. As concerns this particular case [the MH17 crash], we would like to fully join the investigation," he said.