Russian foreign minister refuses to apologize for shooting down of MH17 over Ukraine

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has refused to apologize for the shooting down of Malaysian airliner MH17 over Donetsk, Ukraine in July 2014. The disaster took the lives of 298 people, 283 of whom were passengers and 15 of whom were crew members.

"Any kind of apology for what?" asked Lavrov, in response to a question from the BBC on Friday.

The Minister said that Russia is going to wait for the final results of international investigation.

"The investigation is not over. They said that there are some hundred names, but [not of them] is a suspect, none of them is a witness even ... Let's not jump to conclusions," said Lavrov.

On September 28, an international investigation committee released a preliminary report into the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines civil airliner MH17 over Donetsk. The investigation concluded that the aircraft was shot down by a missile fired from a Buk missile system in separatist-controlled territory six kilometers south of the city of Snezhnoe. The system, according to investigators, was brought to the area from Russian territory and later was returned to the Russian Federation.

In an earlier interview with the BBC, presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said a prelimary report released by the international commission in charge of investigating the disaster cannot be considered a "final truth". Peskov did not respond to direct questions about whether Russia recognizes that the Buk missile system used to shoot down the airplane had, indeed, arrived in Donetsk region from Russian territory.

Earlier, Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that Russian self-propelled, medium-range surface-to-air missile systems, including Buk launchers, have never crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border.