Ten years ago, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down over the war-torn eastern Ukraine, to a horrified world.
The disaster occurred during the early phases of a conflict in which Moscow drove pro-Russian separatists from eastern Ukraine and took control of the Crimean Peninsula from Kyiv.
On July 17, 2014, the tragic aircraft departed from Amsterdam on a sunny summer’s day.
Among the travelers were Jeroen and Nicole Wals and their four children, who were traveling to Malaysia for a vacation, and Dutch HIV/AIDS specialist Joep Lange, who was on route to a conference in Melbourne.
At 4:19 p.m. (1319 GMT), the aircraft exploded midair at 33,000 feet (10.1 kilometers) as it passed over the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatist insurgents were engaged in combat with Ukrainian forces.
Of the 298 persons on board, 196 were Dutch, 43 were Malaysian, and 38 were Australian.
The terror of the aircraft’s final moments was revealed when the jet was eventually rebuilt using some of the wreckage.
“The forward section of the aircraft was penetrated by hundreds of high-energy objects coming from the warhead,” a Dutch-led international investigation heard.
“As a result of the impact and the subsequent blast, the three crew members in the cockpit were killed immediately and the aeroplane broke up in the air.”
According to the investigators, it’s possible that some of the passengers knew they were going to die for as long as ninety seconds.
Russia and Ukraine exchanged accusations over the downing of the jet right away.In 2016, an international investigation discovered “irrefutable evidence” that the aircraft was brought down by a BUK surface-to-air missile system manufactured in Russia and delivered to separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine.
Later investigations revealed that the missile was developed by a Russian military brigade stationed in Kursk, a city in western Russia.
Russia denied that any anti-aircraft missile crossed the border.
In June 2019, four senior figures in east Ukraine’s self-styled rebel Donetsk People’s Republic, Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky and Oleg Pulatov of Russia and Leonid Kharchenko of Ukraine were charged with murder. They were charged with transporting the missile system to the eastern Ukrainian launch site (without really pushing the button).
“Strong indications” suggest that Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the missile’s supply, according to the investigators.
Following a trial that lasted two and a half years, a Dutch court found Girkin, Dubinsky, and Kharchenko guilty of murder and willfully causing an airplane to crash in November 2022. They were also given life sentences.
The three declined to comment on their involvement in the incident or to participate in the court case. Pulatov was found not guilty.
Russia dismissed the court verdict as politically motivated.In January 2024, Girkin was jailed for four years in Russia for repeatedly criticising the Kremlin for not pursuing a more aggressive offensive in Ukraine.
In 2023, the MH17 crash investigators suspended their work, saying there was not enough evidence to prosecute more suspects.
The International Civil Aviation Organization, a UN organization, is still conducting an investigation against Russia.
Additionally, the Netherlands and Ukraine have jointly filed a complaint against Russia at the Strasbourg location of the European Court of Human Rights.
But in the Netherlands, there is less and less prospect that anyone involved will ever face punishment.
“In the end, we were unable to put anyone behind bars,” Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof told public broadcaster NOS on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the disaster.
“That sense of justice is there, but ultimately not as it should have been,” he added.
