A Russian official says US remarks over the crash of a Malaysian airliner in Ukraine resemble Washington’s hasty conclusions on the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The US has established the guilty party “even before the investigation of the Boeing accident. Earlier, the White House established the same way that Saddam [Hussein] had WMDs [weapons of mass destruction],” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Saturday.
The statement follows earlier remarks made by US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power that Washington “cannot rule out” Russia’s role in the recent plane crash over eastern Ukraine.
Moreover on Friday, President Barack Obama said evidence indicated that a Malaysian airliner was hit by a missile launched from areas inside Ukraine controlled by “Russian separatists.”
The accusations resemble similar remarks made by the US in 2003, before it invaded Iraq in blatant violation of international law and under the pretext of finding weapons of mass destruction there.
The world later learned that the former Iraqi regime did not possess WMDs and that the US and British leaders knew this all along.
On July 17, Malaysian Airline flight MH17, which was travelling to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam, came down killing 298 people on board.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the government of the territory in which the tragedy had happened bears responsibility for it. The Russian president added that the incident would not have occurred if Kiev had not resumed its military operations against pro-Russia forces in the country’s east.
Ukraine launched military operations in eastern regions in mid-April to crush the pro-Russia protests there. Hundreds of people have been killed in the military campaign while tens of thousands were forced to escape to Russia.