- While EU expanded the list of Russians against whom trade sanctions have been imposed, Russia said that these sanctions were unreasonable, counter-productive and is not concerned with the national interest of any of the participating nations.
- Russia has shot down allegations of shooting down the Malaysian Airlines flight as the evidences were built upon photos and messages from social media placed by the Ukrainian authorities themselves.
- While USA claims to have satellite evidence of the plane being shot down by an SA-11 missile fired from eastern Ukraine which they consider to be assisted by Russia, there is no evidence on who shot it down.
- Russia has claimed that its air traffic detecting systems had detected the presence of Ukrainian war planes in that area around the time of the crash. Russia was also one of the first to call for an independent probe into the incident.
- Russia has also defended the clearing of the area by the local rebels as it believes that considering the scale of the disaster, and the prevailing conditions of civil war and limited resources the operation has been carried out with utmost efficiency.
- Read at:http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-international/envoy-slams-sanctions-against-russia/article6250940.ece