THE HAGUE: A lawyer for Russia has dismissed Kyiv’s account of the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearings earlier this week as “fiction,” Western media reported on Wednesday.
Moscow-Kyiv
Kyiv alleges Moscow before the UN’s apex court of violating a United Nations anti-terrorism agreement by equipping and backing pro-Russian troops, including militias who shot down MH17, killing 298 passengers and crew in 2014.
Last November, a Dutch court said that Moscow had “control” over the separatist groups and had provided the BUK missile system, which was used by militias to shoot down MH17.
Kyiv repeated the Dutch court report in its case before the ICJ, but Moscow’s lawyer Michael Swainston rejected it as “fiction.”
“This did not occur, and no BUK missile came from Moscow,” Michael Swainston told the ICJ on the last day of hearings.
In its case at the international court, Ukraine also claims Moscow violated a UN anti-discrimination agreement by trying to remove the culture of ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars in Crimea, which Russians annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
In its final submissions on Monday, Kyiv urged the Court find Russia guilty of violating its treaty compulsions and order it to pay compensations.
Moscow rejects systematic human rights abuses in Ukrainian territory and says Russia has met its obligations as per the UN treaty against terror-financing.
It has urged the ICJ to throw out Kyiv’s claim, which stems from 2017 and was filed well before Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in last year.
The International Court of Justice is likely to rule on the case before the end of 2023.
