During the hearings of the second stage of trial hearings on the shooting down of MH17 in the Netherlands, defense lawyers for the accused Oleg Pulatov are expected to make motions, after which the court will determine the further course of the proceedings.

As the correspondent of the Interfax-Ukraine agency reports from the court, on June 10, a recess of the second block of pretrial hearings was called in order to give Pulatov's defense time to study the case materials in more detail and decide with petitions that lawyers will be able to file with the court on behalf of their client. The defense explained that there was a need for a personal meeting with Pulatov to determine the further position in the lawsuit. To this end, lawyers planned a two-week trip to Russia. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the trip was delayed.

In addition to the lawyers' statements, the prosecution received the right to submit a report on the progress of the investigation in order to convince the court that the case was ready for consideration in fact, and no further investigation was required.

The prosecutor claims that Girkin, Pulatov, Dubinsky and Kharchenko are accused of playing a leading, organizing and supporting role in the deployment of the Buk air defense system, which shot down Malaysian Airlines flight МН17 in the sky over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014.

"According to the prosecution, they jointly requested the Buk system, received it from the Russian Federation and used it for the armed struggle in order to bring down an airplane. They used Buk as a tool to achieve their common goal in armed struggle," the prosecutor stated.

In addition, the prosecution alleges that the investigation has a witness who saw the Buk driving, saw soldiers in tank helmets and heard a rocket launch.

"This witness claims that on July 17, 2014, in the afternoon, near the self-proclaimed 'Donetsk People's Republic' checkpoint on the road from Snizhne to Savur-Mohyla he saw the Buk being towed and after a few minutes he heard and saw that the rocket was launched. (Witness) X48 saw how the field caught fire, and knew where the rocket was launched," said representative of the prosecutor's office, Thijs Berger.

The meetings are held in the absence of four defendants, three Russian citizens and one Ukrainian: Igor Girkin (Strelkov), Sergey Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov and Leonid Kharchenko. Only Pulatov is represented by two lawyers from a Dutch company.

As before, due to restrictive measures due to COVID-19, a limited number of people are present both in the courtroom and in the press center.