Downing MH17: Russian terrorist attack killed 298 people, including 80 children

Espreso recalls the tragedy.

In terms of the number of fatalities, this was the largest aviation disaster in the history of aviation since September 11, 2001, and one of the ten largest ever. 

The tragedy was investigated by a specially created international Joint Investigation Team, which included prosecutors and law enforcement officials from 5 countries: The Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Malaysia, Ukraine, as well as representatives of Eurojust. Criminal prosecution was carried out by the Netherlands, as 193 of the 298 victims of the disaster were citizens of this country. 

On May 24, 2018, the head of the international Joint Investigation Team in the Netherlands stated that the plane was shot down by a missile from a Buk anti-aircraft missile system belonging to the 53rd Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces, based near Kursk. On May 25, the Netherlands and Australia jointly officially blamed Russia for the crash and called on it to take responsibility for the tragedy.

In June 2019, the Dutch prosecutor's office indicted four people for the crash: Russian citizens Igor Girkin (call sign Strelkov), Sergey Dubinsky (Khmury), Oleg Pulatov (Gyurza), and Ukrainian citizen Leonid Kharchenko (Krot), who was a member of the DPR group at the time. 

Volodymyr Tsemakh, a former commander of the DNR's air defense unit in the city of Snizhne, near where the plane crash occurred, was also suspected of involvement in the downing of Malaysian Boeing flight MH17. In September 2019, Ukraine handed him over to Russia as part of a detainee and prisoner of war exchange.

The trial in The Hague began on March 9, 2020. And on July 10, 2020, the Netherlands filed a lawsuit on behalf of the state with the European Court of Human Rights against Russia for its involvement in the downing of MH17.

On November 17, 2022, the District Court of The Hague sentenced Igor Girkin (Strelkov), Sergey Dubinsky and Leonid Kharchenko to life imprisonment. They were found guilty of the downing of the Malaysian Boeing. Those responsible for the downing of the plane will also have to pay compensation to the families of the victims - more than 16 million euros. The fourth defendant, Oleg Pulatov (who was a lieutenant colonel in the Russian Airborne Forces in the summer of 2014), was found not guilty.

The court concluded that the military actions of the DPR commanders were coordinated with Russia. In addition, according to the court, the Buk missile system that shot down MH17 was brought from Russia to Ukraine and then taken back.

This trial will not be the last. The head of the International Investigation Team, Fred Westerbeke, said that his group has information about approximately one hundred people connected to the MH17 crash. The catastrophe is the subject of a number of other courts and arbitrations around the world, both at the international level and at the level of civil claims.