Ukraine envoy desperate for truth to prevail

KUALA LUMPUR: Ukraine’s ambassador to Malaysia Ihor Humennyi (pic) is desperate for the truth to prevail on the shooting down of Flight MH17.

He said his government had ordered a ceasefire across a 40km radius of the crash site to facilitate investigations.

“At this stage, it is important to stop military action to allow the investigators to gather evidence and piece them together,’’ he said in an interview yesterday.

Humennyi said it was too early to point the finger at any specific group pending a full probe although seve­ral countries had pointed the finger at Russian-backed rebels.

“Indications are that the missile was launched from a territory the separatists or terrorists were controlling.

“The black boxes were in the possession of the separatists,” he said.

The envoy brushed aside talk that the Ukraine military could have launched the missile, explaining that the troops had not placed such a defence system there.

“The rebels do not possess planes and it was not necessary to have any missiles at that part of the country. Things have changed though,” he said, adding that Ukraine was a missile-producing country.

Humennyi believed that the missile system was operated by trained operatives and “not anybody from the street”.

He said although Malaysians did not blame Ukraine for the incident, there were several “unpleasant” calls to the embassy at the start.

“Why should we do this? We do not want to escalate the conflict. We would prefer to end all this as quickly as possible,” he stressed.