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‘Missile was given during the Soviet era’
Russia’s Defence Ministry on Monday said that it was releasing fresh information to back its claim that the missile that downed a Malaysia Airlines flight over war-torn Ukraine in 2014 was fired by Kiev’s forces. At a briefing, the Ministry said it was releasing the BUK missile’s serial number for the first time and said that it was produced and sent to Ukraine in the Soviet era and had not been returned to Russian territory. The Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed outside the rebel stronghold of Donetsk on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 on board, most of them Dutch nationals.
A top Dutch investigator said his team had concluded that the plane was shot down by a Russian-made BUK missile from a Russian military brigade in the southwestern city of Kursk. “The missile with the serial number 886847379 intended for the BUK missile system on December 29, 1986 was sent by rail transport to military unit number 20152,” said a senior military official, Nikolai Parshin, quoted by RIA Novosti. He said the military unit referred to was based in Ukraine, then a Soviet republic.
