Relatives of German victims of downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 plan to sue Ukraine and its president for criminal negligence for not closing the country’s airspace, a lawyer said on Sunday. Elmar Giemulla, an attorney and professor of aviation law who is representing three German families, said he would file suit soon before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. “Every country bears the responsibility for the security of its airspace,” he wrote in a statement sent to Agence France-Presse . “By keeping its airspace open for transit by aircraft from other countries, the state must ensure the safety of the flights. If this is temporarily impossible, it means that it should close its airspace.” The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 exploded over insurgent-held east Ukraine on July 17, killing all 298 on board, 193 of them Dutch. Four were German, according to the airline. The findings of an initial report by a Dutch-led team of air crash investigators appear to back up claims that the plane was hit by an anti-aircraft missile. Kiev and the West have accused separatists of shooting it down with a surface-to-air BUK missile supplied by Russia -- a charge Moscow denies. Giemulla said in an e-mail he would file the lawsuit against the Ukrainian government and President Petro Poroshenko alleging 298 counts of manslaughter by negligence in about two weeks, and seek damages for pain and suffering of at least one million euros (HK$9.8 million) per victim. He said the litigation would not target Russia as “the evidence was not yet sufficient” but added that he did not rule out launching a lawsuit against Moscow in future. Air crash investigators so far have studied photos of the crash site, radar data and information gleaned from the downed jet's "black boxes" - its cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder. They all indicated that there was no technical fault that may have caused the plane to disintegrate. The cockpit voice recorder "revealed no signs of any technical faults or an emergency situation", the board said. "Neither were any warning tones heard in the cockpit that might have pointed to technical problems." The site in eastern Ukraine where Malaysia Airlines flight 17 crashed two months ago is still too unsafe for investigators to resume the recovery of victims’ remains, Dutch Defence Minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert has said. Initially, forensic experts travelled to the crash site near the town of Grabove to collect body parts, but the search has been suspended for a month because of heavy fighting in the area. Forensic experts hope to return to the site if the ceasefire holds and before the onset of winter. The Netherlands lost 193 citizens, Malaysia lost 43 and Australia 27. So far, 193 crash victims had been identified in total. With additional reporting from Agencies