ProjectBuilder.build(File,ProjectBuildingRequest) returns null project if dependency version info is missing

ProjectBuilder.build(File,ProjectBuildingRequest) returns null MavenProject instance for the following pom.xml even when using ModelBuildingRequest.VALIDATION_LEVEL_MINIMAL. Expected/desired behaviour is to return MavenProject instance populated with all good/resolved dependencies and information about all bad/missing dependencies in MavenExecutionResult.getExceptions and/or MavenExecutionResult.getDependencyResolutionResult.

 
<project>
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

  <groupId>xxx</groupId>
  <artifactId>m01</artifactId>
  <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>

  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>junit</groupId>
      <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</project>

Original m2e bugreport https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=343568