by Our Foreign Desk

MOSCOW appealed to the International Civil Aviation Organisation yesterday to open a new probe into last year’s downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine.

The Dutch Safety Board said in its final report, released on Tuesday, that the jet was destroyed by a Soviet-made Buk surface-to-air missile.

Two-thirds of the 298 people who died were Dutch.

However, Russian aviation agency head Oleg Storchevoi said: “The Russian commission categorically disagrees with the conclusions of the final report. They are fundamentally wrong. The lack of logic there is beyond comparison.

“I had a feeling that the commission was cherry-picking the evidence to suit a theory they had chosen,” he added.

The 15-month-long Dutch inquiry did not accuse any organisation specifically of having fired the missile, but it identified an area of 120 square miles from where it claimed the launch must have taken place.

That area was entirely controlled by anti-fascist forces who have resisted attempts by far-right groups financed and armed by Kiev to crush their independence, according to the Ukrainian National Security Council.

Russia and the Donbass rebels insist that, if the plane was destroyed by a missile, it must have been fired by the Ukrainian military.

Mr Storchevoi accused the Dutch of “hiding important data” from Moscow, questioning the authenticity of shrapnel reportedly found in the wreckage.

Donetsk People’s Republic leader Alexander Zakharchenko reiterated his denial of any rebel involvement in the crash.

“We have said before and we still say that we did not shoot down the plane,” he declared.