Should Russia wait for international lynching?

Australia could form an international tribunal together with other countries following the investigation of the crash of the Malaysian Boeing in Donbass, but the sentence of this court will have no binding force, Russian political analysts told Vestnik Kavkaza, commenting on the initiative of the Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to form a tribunal of Australia, Ukraine, Malaysia, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The editor-in-chief of the Russia in Global Affairs magazine, Fyodor Lukyanov, expressed confidence that this court will be formed if those countries agree to hold it. "Plenty of countries can come together and create something like a transnational non-governmental organization that deals with this issue," he explained.

At the same time, these countries have no tools to enforce the sentence at the international level, Lukyanov stressed. "A Tribunal may be formed, another thing is that neither the decision nor any other findings of the Tribunal can have legal consequences. Of course, in terms of the impact on public opinion and the general political atmosphere, I think its sentence will be used to the max," the editor-in-chief of the Russia in Global Affairs magazine noted.

A member of the Federation Council Committee for International Affairs, Igor Morozov, told Vestnik Kavkaza about the absence of any consequence of such "international lynching". "They can create a tribunal of five or even ten countries, but it will have no international significance. In fact, it is unlikely that this initiative will be supported by the UN Security Council," the senator stressed.

According to him, it is important not to create tribunals in the case of the crash of Boeing but to provide a complete picture of what happened. "There are a lot of successful solutions in the investigation which have not been published yet. The entire international community requires transparency and access to all the materials in the Netherlands," Igor Morozov noted.

The deputy dean of the Faculty of Global Economics and International Affairs of the Higher School of Economics of the National Research University, Andrei Suzdaltsev, also stressed that Moscow would not accept the jurisdiction of the tribunal. "In this case, Russia can also organize such a tribunal to condemn, for example, the leadership of Ukraine," he said.

The expert explained that the formation of any kind of tribunal today does not make sense, because the file on the disaster is still classified information. "The Dutch government promised to disclose it no earlier than October 11-12. And only when that is done can you assemble all sorts of tribunals," Suzdaltsev concluded.