Donbass remembers victims of Boeing 777 crash

Donbass is holding commemorative events at the site of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 crash, dedicated to the anniversary of the tragedy. The leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Alexander Zakharchenko, Plenipotentiary Representative of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, Denis Pushilin, and representatives of the republic are attending the events.

A mourning ceremony has been organized in the village of Grabovo, where the largest section of the plane once was.

There are several hundred people, including not only the villagers, but also people who came from other towns of Donbass. After the ceremony ends 298 white balloons, corresponding to the number of victims, will be released into the sky, RIA Novosti reports.

The deputy head of the Editorial Council of Vestnik Kavkaza, the Director General of the Institute for Caspian Cooperation, Sergey Mikheyev, told Vestnik Kavkaza that a year ago, when the plane was shot down, "no one wanted to understand what had happened." "Figuratively speaking, the Boeing has not fallen yet but everyone has already blamed Russia. As a result, the fall of the Boeing became a catalyst of the conflict in Ukraine and seriously aggravated the situation," he said.

"The most important thing was just to justify anti-Russian sanctions. Russia should do something terrible, merciless and cruel behind the eyes of European inhabitants, so that they would not ask: "Why must we suffer from these sanctions, and why must we introduce these sanctions?" Sergei Mikheyev believes.

According to him, there will be no consensus on the causes of the crash in the Donbass. "There is the Russian position, there is the Ukrainian position and the position of the West, which is very close to the Ukrainian one. I don’t think we will know about it for a long time, because the investigation conducted by the official committee in the Netherlands is very strange and long, the materials are classified. Moreover, there is no assurance that the investigation really wants to find an answer to all the questions," the deputy head of the Editorial Council of Vestnik Kavkaza said.

Political consultant, director of 'Slobodchuk and partners: politics, PR, elections', Sergey Slobodchuk, assessed the tragedy as one of the peaks of the Ukrainian crisis. "Throughout the whole year, the Boeing was considered to be a disaster on several levels: international relations, the domestic policy of Ukraine and the law. In the field of international relations the plane crash became a pretext for the United States and the West to blame in the first place, the self-proclaimed DPR, and then Russia," he said.

The expert added that since an information war is in full swing, the anniversary of the destruction of the liner adds the information factor to the crash. "The Ukrainian media will again blame Russia. Alas, we are unlikely to know the objective results of the investigation, because, apart from the relatives of the victims, I do not see any forces concerned about establishing the truth," he pointed out.

"Of course, the West used it as an excuse to apply international sanctions against Russia. A year later, we see that this tragedy was a motive for all the participants of the Ukrainian crisis to promote their interests," Sergey Slobodchuk concluded.