On July 17, 2014, a passenger Boeing 777 was operating flight MH17 from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A missile fired from a Russian Buk missile system shot it down over the occupied part of Donetsk region (near the village of Hrabove).
As a result of the tragedy, 298 people on board the aircraft lost their lives. This included 15 members of the Malaysian crew and 283 passengers, of whom 80 were minors.
The official investigation was conducted by an international group of investigators from the countries that had the most victims – Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands, as well as Ukraine, the state on whose territory the disaster occurred. Russia declared its readiness to cooperate, but in practice did not assist the investigation; moreover, its representatives fabricated evidence and attempted to shift the responsibility for their crime onto Ukraine. There was even an attempt by the Kremlin to assert that the "Boeing" was shot down from territories controlled by Ukraine. However, the Hague court refuted this and other versions that the Russians tried to put forward.
The court proceedings began on March 9, 2020, in the Netherlands. On June 10, 2022, the trial regarding MH17 concluded.
On June 23, 2022, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution recognizing that the Malaysian Boeing 777 flight MH17 was shot down by a Russian missile. Moscow was asked to officially apologize to the relatives of the victims of the air disaster for spreading misinformation.
On November 17, 2022, a verdict was announced in the Netherlands for four defendants involved in the downing of the aircraft. These included Oleg Pulatov, a reserve lieutenant colonel of the Russian airborne troops. According to the investigation, he, along with Ukrainian fighter Leonid Kharchenko, was responsible for delivering the "Buk" to its destination. Reserve FSB Colonel Igor Girkin, nicknamed Strelkov, made a request to obtain the Buk missile system in Russia. Senior officer of the Russian GRU Sergey Dubinsky was responsible for transporting the system through the Donetsk region.
The Hague District Court sentenced Dubinsky, Kharchenko, and Girkin to life imprisonment. Pulatov was acquitted of charges – he was the only one represented by a lawyer.
The Hague court, during the announcement of the verdict in the case of the Malaysian MH17 aircraft disaster in Donetsk, stated that there was falsification of evidence provided by the Russian side.
Let us remember all the war crimes of the occupiers!