Moscow blames Kiev for guiding MH17 to dangerous airspace

MOSCOW/KIEV -- The Ukrainian authorities should be blamed for allowing a commercial jet to fly over a war-stricken territory, the Russian State Duma, or the lower house of parliament, said Friday.

Special: Malaysia Airlines plane crashes in Ukraine

"It is stunning in the first hand that the Ukrainian aviation authority let a commercial plane to enter the airspace where fighting is raging there," speaker of the State Duma, Sergei Naryshkin, told reporters.

He said the fact that the Malaysian Flight MH17 was guided to the airspace over the territory where heavy weapons have been used could be qualified as criminal negligence or even conspiracy.

Alexander Neradko, head of Russia's Federal Air Navigation Authority (Rosaviatsia), said the plane had been guided by the Ukrainian air traffic control before the tragedy happened.

"It was the responsibility of an air traffic control of the Ukrainian Dnipropetrovsk air traffic control center, and Ukraine was in charge of air traffic safety in that area," he said in a program aired by Russian TV channel Rossiya 24.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said earlier that Kiev does not rule out suspending all bilateral trade with Russia.

"We should prepare for the practically complete restriction of trade with Russia in the bilateral format," the Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.

Russian President Vladimir Putin late Thursday pinned the blame on Kiev for the crash of the Malaysian Boeing 777.

The Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 -- a Boeing 777 passenger plane -- -- crashed in eastern Ukraine near the Russian border en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on Thursday, with 298 people onboard reportedly dead.

A number of countries have prohibited national airlines to fly over eastern Ukraine after the tragedy.

The Ukrainian authorities have closed airspace in eastern Ukraine since the Malaysian flight crash, Eurocontrol, a European civil organization working for the safety of air navigation, said in a statement on Thursday.