Press Release, 18.07.2014

YABLOKO leader Sergei Mitrokhin, first deputy Chair of the Moscow branch of YABLOKO Galina Mikhaleva and YABLOKO activists laid flowers to the Embassy of the Netherlands to pay tribute to the memory of the victims of Malaysia Airlines crash.

Sergei Mitrokhin expressed deep condolences to the relatives and co-patriots of the passengers of Boeing 777.

“It’s another dire tragedy of this crazy war which takes place in the territory of Ukraine. We think that Russia’s authorities carry an enormous responsibility for this war and its victims as well. They [Russia’s authorities] endlessly display hypocrisy and pretend they have nothing to do with this conflict though the whole world knows that exactly Russia’s authorities are one of the main puppet masters. They people who call themselves a “national levy” and “resistance” an so on obey exactly the authorities of Russia.

According to the posts on the Internet, it goes with a great deal of evidence [in the latter post Igor Strelkov wrote that a ‘birdy’ – a An 26 plane – was shot in the area of Torez, Ukraine, he also wrote that ‘they had been warned not to fly in our sky’, ‘the birdy’ fell, but did not harm residential housing’. And ‘there was also information on a second shot plane, allegedly a SU plane.’] that it was a passenger Boeing 777 which was shot down by mistake by the so-called “separatists”. But our authorities continue to display hypocrisy and pretend that things are no the way they are and try to prove that black is white and white is black and try to manipulate public opinion”, said Sergei Mitrokhin.

According to Mitrokhin, if Russia’s authorities don’t change their strategy of Russia-Ukraine relations and don’t admit that they are the concerned party in the conflict the tragedies will continue.

Sergei Mitrokhin reminded of YABLOKO’s initiative to conduct an international conference for resolution of the conflict. YABLOKO founder Grigory Yavlinsky wrote about this in his blog today:” We must stop war crimes in Eastern Ukraine, stop transfer of weapons there, sponsoring and continuous heating up this absurdity, toughly close the border from the Russian side for “volunteers”, provide maximum humanitarian assistance to the people who are in a combat zone, conduct demilitarisation of the region, engage in direct negotiations with the Ukrainian leadership at the top level and to convene an international conference for resolution of the conflict.”