Gilze-Rijen, October 13

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine by a Russian-made Buk missile, the Dutch Safety Board concluded today in its final report on the July 2014 crash that killed all 298 people on board.

The long-awaited findings of the board, which was not empowered to address questions of responsibility, did not specify who launched the missile.

“A 9n314m warhead detonated outside the aeroplane to the left side of the cockpit. This fits the kind of warhead installed in the Buk surface-to-air missile system,” said Safety Board head Tjibbe Joustra, presenting the report.

Russia had disputed the type of missile used, he added.

At a meeting with victims’ families earlier today, Joustra said passengers who were not killed by the impact of the missile would have been rendered unconscious by the sudden decompression of the aircraft and a lack of oxygen at 33,000 feet.

Joustra was speaking at the Gilze-Rijen military base where the flight cabin and business class section of the Boeing 777 have been assembled painstakingly from wreckage brought back from Ukraine.

The board also found that Ukraine had reason to close airspace over the conflict zone, and that the 61 airlines that had continued flying there should have recognised the potential danger.

It recommended international aviation rules be changed to force operators to be more transparent about their choice of routes.

BUK maker disputes inquiry findings

Moscow, October 13

The Russian maker of BUK missiles today sought to discredit findings of an official inquiry into the downing of a Malaysia Airlines jet over rebel-held eastern Ukraine last year.

State-controlled Russian firm Almaz-Antey showed videos of a BUK missile being exploded close to the nose of decommissioned Ilyushin plane.

The experiment, it said, disproved claims the missile was shot down from Snizhne, a village controlled by pro-Russian rebels. Instead they said the passenger jet seems to have been shot down from territory disputed by insurgents and Ukrainian troops, and by an outdated version of the BUK missile that is no longer in use by the Russian military.

“The results of the experiment completely dispute the conclusions of the Dutch commission about the type of the rocket and the launch site,” said Yan Novikov, director of Almaz-Antey, which has been put under Western sanctions. The firm’s glitzy presentation -- which saw reams of slides projected on a giant screen -- was carried live by Russia’s state-run media.

It is expected to form a central plank of Moscow’s rebuttal to the report from the international inquiry.

“Today we can definitively say that if the Boeing was shot down by a BUK missile system then it was hit by a 9M38 from the area of Zaroshchenske village,” company official said.