Russians Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy, and Ukrainian national Leonid Kharchenko, were found guilty of 298 counts of murder and “unlawfully causing a plane to crash” by The Hague District Court at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. They were sentenced to life imprisonment. The fourth accused Oleg Pulatov was acquitted after the court found that he had no prior knowledge of the plan to launch the missile. Nor did he have the authority to overrule Dubinskiy’s order to find the missile, the court said. Compensation totaling €16m (£14m) will also be given to family members of the victims. Prosecutors and suspects have two weeks to appeal the guilty verdicts. Hague District Court judge Hendrik Steenhuis found that MH17 was shot down in July 2014 by a Russian Buk missile fired from a Kremlin-held region of eastern Ukraine. He said early in the proceedings: “The court can already state that it considers that MH17 was shot down by a Buk missile fired from an agricultural field near Pervomaisk [in the Russian-held Luhansk region of Ukraine].” The Malaysian Airlines flight was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew members. The incident sparked geopolitical turmoil early in Russia’s initial invasion of eastern Ukraine, where MH17 went down. Russia has denied any responsibility, but the Dutch government holds Moscow responsible. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko at the time described the incident as a “terrorist act”. Two thirds of the passengers on the flight between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur were Dutch. Last war in Ukraine: “Explosions” in Crimea. CIA in talks on ‘nuclear threat’ UN reports extension of grain deal Image: Debris at the crash site of flight MH17 which killed 298 people Image: Flight MH17 was bound for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia but was shot down over eastern Ukraine Although the four men likely thought the Boeing 777 was targeted “by mistake” as they believed the plane to be military, “this does not diminish the intent” to destroy the plane and kill all on board, the judge said. Foreign Secretary James Cleverley tweeted shortly after the verdict: “Guilty. Today’s verdicts, convicting three people of murder in connection with the downing of MH17, are a landmark conviction and an important step towards justice for the victims and their families. “I would like to thank the excellent efforts of the Dutch authorities and the joint investigation team.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also wrote: “An important court decision in The Hague. The first sentences for the perpetrators of the downing of MH17. Punishment for all RF [Russia’s] the atrocities then and now are inevitable.” Since the four men were not considered combatants, as the DPR is technically a non-state actor, the four were not entitled to the immunity afforded to soldiers in war. Despite the publicity of a long trial, the accused were never likely to be jailed and remain free. Three were tried in absentia and one pleaded not guilty through lawyers he hired to represent him. No one attended the trial. Also on board MH17 were 43 Malaysian citizens, 27 Australians, twelve Indonesians, ten Britons and residents of Belgium, Germany, Canada, New Zealand and the Philippines. About 200 family members of the victims were in court today, the Associated Press reported. Anton Kotte, who lost his son, daughter-in-law and six-year-old grandson in MH17, said: “The truth on the table – that’s the most important thing.” He added that the hearing was “D-Day” for relatives. Robbert van Heijningen, who lost his brother, sister-in-law and nephew, called the attack an “act of brutality” that he could never put behind him. “I call it a stone in my heart and stones… don’t go away,” van Heijningen added. Suspicion quickly fell on fighters from the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), a Kremlin-backed separatist army in eastern Ukraine. The missile used to shoot down the 777 was found to be a Russian-made Buk missile. An earlier Dutch investigation found DPR to be responsible. That investigation, which concluded its findings after five years in 2019, led to criminal proceedings against Russian nationals Girkin, Dubinskiy and Pulatov and Ukrainian national Kharchenko. Image: A pro-Russian separatist stands at the crash site Image: A local official holds an intact teddy bear that was on the plane A separate investigation found in May 2018 that the launcher used to launch the surface-to-air missile belonged to Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, a unit of the Russian armed forces based in the Russian city of Kursk – with evidence showing how it was transported from a Russian base across the Ukrainian border. The team recreated the route taken by the missile convoy from Kursk to eastern Ukraine using video and images obtained using open source intelligence (OSINT). “All the vehicles in a convoy carrying the missile were part of the Russian armed forces,” Wilbert Paulissen, one of the international investigators, told a televised news conference. Girkin, a former FSB colonel turned commander in the DPR, received the most attention at the trial. Image: A boy stands in front of candles and flowers during a memorial service in Kuala Lumpur “A slap in the face to the families of the victims” Attorney General Fred Westerbeke said in 2019 that Russia’s failure to help the investigation that led to the charges was a “slap in the face” for the families of those who died. “We found that there was Russian Federation involvement because it made available the missile that was used to shoot down MH17,” he said. “The Russian Federation has not revealed anything about what happened and this is a slap in the face to all the relatives of the victims and I call on them to start cooperating.” Australian Vanessa Rizk, who lost both her parents in the crash when she was 22, said Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government were part of the “political nightmare” that led to her grief. “I still cannot fathom that our family has been embroiled in a frustrating and deadly political crisis,” he said in 2021.
