Dutch Official Says Russia Must Accept Blame for 2014 Attack on Jet

UNITED NATIONS — Days after a consortium of international investigators announced that Russia was the source of a missile that shot down a civilian airliner over Ukraine four years ago, the foreign minister of the Netherlands on Tuesday challenged Russia to “accept its responsibility” for the deaths of 298 people killed in the attack.

Foreign Minister Stef Blok of the Netherlands, whose country has taken a lead role in the investigation, told journalists ahead of a Security Council session on the war in Ukraine that he had come to New York to confront the Russian delegation “eye to eye” in the hope of compelling Russia to cooperate in the investigation and bring those responsible for downing the airliner to justice.

So far, Blok said, that cooperation has not been forthcoming.

“Unfortunately, since the day of the crash, Russia has done its best to bring about conspiracy theories, denials, distortions of reality and disinformation,” Blok said.

Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily A. Nebenzya, reiterated his country’s long-standing insistence that Russia had nothing to do with shooting down the aircraft. He also accused investigators of ignoring evidence he claimed undermined the Western consensus that Russian forces or the Ukrainian separatists they supported were responsible.

“Our position has not changed in four years,” Nebenzya said.

Last Thursday, an international consortium of investigators led by the Netherlands and Australia announced that the missile used to shoot down the aircraft, a Boeing 777 traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, belonged to the 53rd Anti-aircraft Brigade, an active duty Russian unit based in the city of Kursk. Most of the passengers on the jet were Dutch or Australian citizens.

Through photographic and video evidence, the investigators were able to track the missile as it was transported on a mobile launcher from Russia to a rebel-held sector of Ukraine and back around the time the aircraft, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, was shot down.

Investigators have identified about 100 people who they believe were involved in the attack, though they have refrained from identifying any suspects, citing the continuing investigation.

Many questions remain, officials say, and Russian assistance is needed to answer them.

“The rocket that was used was owned by the Russian army and therefore the Russian Federation should of course provide the public prosecutor with information about how this rocket ended up in Ukrainian territory, who was responsible for it,” Blok said in an interview after the Security Council session.

So far, he said, Russia had not issued an official response to the latest revelations. The initial reaction from Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, in a phone call last week, was “quite abrasive,” Blok said, though Lavrov promised to study the evidence presented.

The Dutch government, Blok said, would not rule out pushing for additional sanctions against Russia should it fail to cooperate with the investigation.

“There is nothing we exclude,” he said.

The 4-year-old war in Ukraine has left more than 10,000 people dead and remains a serious strain on relations between Russia and the West.

In remarks at the Security Council on Tuesday, Nikki R. Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the Trump administration would not lift sanctions until Russia removed its forces from eastern Ukraine and gave up control of Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

“Russia,” Haley said, “has created a catastrophe of suffering in Ukraine.”