Comment AMSTERDAM — A Dutch court on Thursday convicted two Russians and a Ukrainian national who commanded pro-Russian separatists in Donbas of murder in the 2014 downing of a Malaysia Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers and crew. The conviction of the defendants, including two former Russian security service officers, has implicated the Russian government, which has long denied responsibility for the downing of the plane and has refused to extradite the defendants or cooperate with investigators. A third Russian defendant was acquitted. None of the defendants attended the trial. Those convicted were Igor Girkin, a former colonel in the FSB, Russia’s security service, who later served as the defense minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. Sergei Dubinsky, a former officer in the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, and Leonid Kharchenko, the Ukrainian commander of separatist forces in the Donbass. They were sentenced to life in prison, although they may never be caught. The fourth defendant, Oleg Pulatov, who served in a special unit of the GRU, was acquitted due to lack of evidence. Pulatov was the only defendant to send lawyers to defend him at the trial and had previously asked the court to acquit him, saying he played no role in the incident. The verdict draws a line in a years-long investigation into who fired a Buk surface-to-air missile that hit the Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014, leaving bodies and debris strewn across fields in eastern Ukraine. The incident occurred during fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces in an area where several Ukrainian military aircraft were shot down in the weeks before Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was downed. Russia has long maintained that it was not a party to the 2014 conflict in Donbas and that it did not control pro-Russian fighters in Donetsk, where the four defendants held senior positions as part of separatist militias. The court, however, ruled that Moscow funded and armed separatist forces in the Donetsk People’s Republic and generally controlled the breakaway region and its authorities. The court also found that the Buk launch was intentional but that the defendants thought they were shooting at a military aircraft. “The verdict cannot bring back those who died,” said presiding judge Hendrik Steenhuis. “But there has been clarity about who is to blame.” Here’s what we know about the four suspects accused of shooting down flight MH17 The Kremlin has always vehemently denied any involvement in the downing of Flight 17 and tried to discredit the investigation into the incident as politically biased. He advanced various explanations for how the plane was brought down, from blaming the Ukrainian government to dismissing the evidence in the case as fabricated. Dutch investigators went to great lengths to debunk these claims, publishing a detailed timeline of the strike, identifying the role the defendants played a role in the delivery of the missile system to the launch site in Pervomaiskyi and the subsequent downing of the plane. Investigators in downing of plane over Ukraine accuse 4 suspects of ties to Russian intelligence and pro-Moscow militias Many family members of the victims of Flight 17 have suggested that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine this year could have been avoided if the international community had pushed harder against Moscow in the years since the plane was shot down. “Despite evidence to the contrary, the West was happy to accept the idea that separatist groups in Ukraine were not just proxies for the Russian Federation, so they could turn a blind eye to Russian aggression,” said Eliot Higgins, the founder of the research. . the Bellingcat team that used open source information to link the Buk missile system to Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade and shared their findings with Dutch researchers. “This led to a frozen conflict in Eastern Ukraine, which gave Russia time to prepare for a full military invasion of Ukraine, leading to international impacts on energy and food supplies,” Higgins added. “If the West had resisted Russian aggression in 2014, we might have avoided the situation we find ourselves in today.” Just two days before the verdict on Flight 17, the nearly nine-month war in Ukraine saw one of its most tense moments when a missile landed in Poland, killing two people. Officials in Washington and Warsaw said it was likely a stray Ukrainian air defense missile that landed in the Polish-Ukrainian border area. The US National Security Council said in a statement that regardless of the final conclusions of the investigation into the incident, “the party ultimately responsible for this tragic incident is Russia” as it launched the war. The Russian embassy in Australia reacted with irony, tweeting this statement “all you need to know about the MH17 investigation and trial”. Girkin, who served as commander of Kremlin-backed separatist forces in Donetsk, once boasted that he “triggered the war” in Ukraine. For years he lived safely in Russia, but recently dropped out of sight in Moscow and reportedly returned last month to the front lines in Ukraine. Girkin is believed to be the senior military officer who was in direct contact with Moscow at the time the plane was shot down and is said to have helped transport the Buk missile system. He has previously said he felt “moral responsibility” for the mass death of passengers, but denied playing a direct role. In mid-October, Girkin wrote on his popular Telegram blog that he had rejoined the “active military.” Girkin often uses the blog as a platform to strongly criticize Russia’s military strategy in Ukraine. His wife, Myroslava Reginska, shared a photo of Girkin, who also goes by the name of rebel Igor Strelkov, wearing a military uniform. After reports that Girkin had returned to the front, the Ukrainians launched a crowdfunding campaign to collect a $100,000 reward for his capture. If Ukrainian forces capture Girkin, the Netherlands will likely seek his extradition in hopes of bringing justice to the hundreds of family members who lost loved ones on Flight 17. Understanding the Russia-Ukraine conflict See 3 more stories
