U.S. to Russia: hand over MH17 evidence
With their trial set to start in a few days, the United States has called on Russia to hand over suspects in the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), a disaster that cost the lives of all 298 people on board. “It is long past time for Russia to comply, to reveal what it knows and to turn over those individuals who have been indicated in these cases,” U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Christopher Robinson said in an interview with RFE/RL during a visit to Prague on March 2. Russian citizens Igor Girkin, Oleg Pulatov and Sergei Dubinsky, and Ukrainian national Leonid Kharchenko have been charged by Dutch prosecutors with shooting down the Boeing 777 with a Russian-made Buk missile as it flew over territory held by Russia-backed militants in eastern Ukraine.