SINGAPORE (Bernama) – Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad will hold bilateral meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the 33rd ASEAN Summit here.
The meeting is scheduled for Tuesday. Putin is in the island state to attend the 3rd ASEAN-Russia Summit and the 13th East Asia Summit.
Foreign Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah, who confirmed the meeting, said that the MH17 Flight shot down during the conflict zone in Eastern Ukraine in 2014 may be among the topics of discussion.
“Our stand is always clear, we are still waiting for conclusive reports from the Joint Investigation Team (JIT),” he said at a media conference here yesterday.
After four years of investigations into the MH17 incident, the Netherlands-led JIT team said the plane was shot down by a Russian-made missile, BUK TELAR.
The team believed BUK TELAR’s weapons were used to shoot down MH17, and it came from the 53rd Brigade Anti-Aircraft Missile (53rd Brigade), which was a unit of the Russian Army from Kursk in the Russian Federation.
JIT members comprise of police and prosecutors from the Netherlands, as well as officials from Malaysia, Australia, and Ukraine.
The Boeing 777 was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was fired while crossing the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine, resulting in 298 people being killed.
Besides Putin, Dr Mahathir will also hold bilateral meetings with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
– Bernama
