Malaysian Airlines Flight 17

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17) was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down by Russian forces on 17 July 2014, while flying over eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed. Contact with the aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, was lost when it was about from the Ukraine–Russia border, and wreckage from the aircraft fell near Hrabove in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, from the border. The shoot-down occurred during the war in Donbas over territory controlled by Russian separatist forces.

The responsibility for investigation was delegated to the Dutch Safety Board released new material by John Sweeney who cited three civilian witnesses from Donbas who saw the Buk launcher in the rebel-controlled territory on the day when MH17 crashed. Two witnesses said the crew of the launcher and a military vehicle escorting it spoke with Moscow accents. On the same day Ignat Ostanin, a Russian journalist, published an analysis of photos and films of Buk units moving in Russia and Ukraine in the days before and after the MH17 crash. According to Ostanin, the markings on the specific launcher suspected of being used to shoot MH17, together with the number plates of the large goods vehicle that carried the launcher, suggested that it belonged to the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade of the Air Defence Forces of the Russian Ground Forces.

On 8 October 2014, the president of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) gave a presentation about MH17 to a German parliamentary committee overseeing intelligence activities. According to '' Der Spiegel'', the report contained a detailed analysis which concluded that pro-Russian separatists had used a captured Ukrainian Buk system to shoot down Flight MH17. The report also noted that "Russian claims the missile had been fired by Ukrainian soldiers and that a Ukrainian fighter jet had been flying close to the passenger jet were false". The Attorney General of Germany opened an investigation against unknown persons due to a suspected war crime.

Between November 2014 and May 2016, UK-based investigative collective Bellingcat made a series of claims, based on their examination of photos in social media and other open-source information. Bellingcat said that the launcher used to shoot down the aircraft was a Buk of the Russian 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade based in Kursk, which had been transported from Donetsk to Snizhne and was controlled by separatists in Ukraine on the day of the attack, and that the Buk launcher had a serial number 332.

On 22 December 2014, the Dutch news service RTL Nieuws published a statement from an unnamed local resident who said he had witnessed the shooting down of MH17, which he said was shot down by a missile from rebel territory. He had taken photographs which he had passed to the SBU.

In January 2015, a report produced by the German investigative team CORRECT!V concluded a Buk surface-to-air missile launcher operated by the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade shot down MH17. Other circumstantial evidence was presented separately by various parties that supported this version, identifying specific launcher vehicle, operator name, truck transporting it and its alleged route through Russia and Ukraine.

In March 2015, Reuters published statements from named witnesses from Chervonyi Zhovten ( uk, Червоний Жовтень), close to Torez and Snizhne, who said they saw the Buk rocket passing over the village when it was fired from a field around 1.5 km away. It also published a statement from a witness who was said to be a separatist fighter (referred to by first name only) who confirmed that the launcher was placed in that area on the day of the Boeing crash to prevent Ukrainian airstrikes.

In July 2015, News Corp Australia published the transcript of a 17-minute video recorded at the scene shortly after the crash. The transcript and published segments of the video indicated that Russian-backed rebels arrived at the crash site expecting to find the wreckage of a military aircraft and crew who had parachuted from the aircraft.

In May 2016, Stratfor released satellite imagery taken five hours before the crash which showed a Russian Buk system travelling on a flatbed truck east through Makiivka, 40 km away from Snizhne. Stratfor's concluded that a Buk system had moved from the Russian border toward Donetsk on 15 July 2014, and then moved back to the east on the afternoon of 17 July 2014, hours before Flight MH17 was shot down.

Dutch Safety Board reports

Preliminary report

On 9 September 2014, the preliminary report was released by the Dutch Safety Board (DSB). This preliminary report concluded that there was no evidence of any technical or operational failure in the aircraft or from the crew prior to the ending of the CVR and FDR recordings at 13.20:03 hrs (UTC). The report also said that "damage observed on the forward fuselage and cockpit section of the aircraft appears to indicate that there were impacts from a large number of high-energy objects from outside the aircraft". According to the investigators, this damage probably led to a loss of structural integrity that caused an in-flight break-up first of the forward parts of the aircraft and then of the remainder with an expansive geographic spread of the aircraft's pieces.

Tjibbe Joustra, Chairman of the Dutch Safety Board, explained that the investigation thus far pointed "towards an external cause of the MH17 crash", but determining the exact cause required further investigation. They also said that they aimed to publish the final report within a year of the crash date.

Final report

The Dutch Safety Board (DSB) issued its final report on the crash on 13 October 2015. The report concluded that the crash was caused by a Buk 9M38-series surface-to-air missile with a 9N314M warhead. The warhead detonated outside and above the left-hand side of the cockpit. Fragments from the exploding warhead killed the three people in the cockpit and caused structural damage to the airliner leading to an in-flight break-up resulting in a wreckage area of and loss of the lives of all 298 occupants. Based on evidence they were able to exclude meteor strikes, the aircraft having technical defects, a bomb, and an air-to-air attack as causes of the crash. Calculating the trajectory of the missile, the Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory determined that it was fired within a area southeast of Torez. Narrowing down a specific launch site was outside the DSB's mandate. The findings did not specify who launched the Buk missile, but the area identified by the DSB was controlled by pro-Russian separatists at the time of the downing, according to the final report.

In addition to the technical investigation, the selection of the flight route was also investigated by the DSB. Some airlines had avoided eastern Ukrainian airspace prior to the MH17 shootdown, while many others, including 62 operators from 32 countries, had continued to fly routes over the region. The DSB judged that the Ukrainian authorities should have closed the airspace above eastern Ukraine prior to the incident due to the ongoing conflict and earlier military shootdowns, but noted that states involved in armed conflicts rarely did so. It recommended that such states should exercise more caution when evaluating their airspace, and that operators should more thoroughly assess the risks when selecting routes over areas of conflict.

Criminal investigation

The criminal investigation into the downing of MH17 is being led by the Public Prosecution Service of the Dutch Ministry of Justice, and is the largest in Dutch history, involving dozens of prosecutors and 200 investigators. Investigators interviewed witnesses and examined forensic samples, satellite data, intercepted communications, and information on the Web. Participating in the investigation along with the Netherlands, are the four other members of the joint investigation team (JIT), Belgium, Ukraine, Australia, and lastly, Malaysia, which joined in November 2014. Early in the investigation, the JIT eliminated accident, internal terrorist attack or air-to-air attack from another aircraft as the cause of the crash.

In December 2014, in a letter to the Security Council, the Netherlands' United Nations representative wrote that "the Dutch government is deliberately refraining from any speculation or accusations regarding legal responsibility for the downing of MH17". Also in December, the assistant secretary of the United States Department of State's European and Eurasian Affairs stated that the United States had given all of the information they held, including classified information, to the Dutch investigators and to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

On 30 March 2015, the JIT released a Russian-language video calling for witnesses in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions who might have seen a Buk missile system. The video included some previously undisclosed recordings allegedly of tapped phone conversations between rebel fighters about the Buk. In one recording, of a conversation a few hours after the aircraft was shot down, a fighter says that a member of the Buk's accompanying crew had been left behind at a checkpoint. In another recording, dated the day after the shooting down, a rebel allegedly says the Buk system and its crew had been brought from Russia by "the Librarian". The video presented a "scenario" in which a Buk missile was transported on a Volvo low loader truck from Sievernyi (), a town located within a kilometre of the Russian border (near Krasnodon), to Donetsk during the night of 16/17 July.

In the week following the public appeal, the JIT received more than 300 responses resulting in dozens of "serious witnesses". In 2016 the presence of the transloader of matching colour with a Buk missile was confirmed on a satellite photo of the area taken just a few hours before the downing of the airliner, which was described as "correlating with other evidence" by Stratfor who found the photo in DigitalGlobe archive.

On 9 April 2015 Dutch authorities made available 569 documents concerning the shootdown. Personal information and official interviews had been redacted. A further 147 documents were not made public.

Findings of the joint investigation team

On 28 September 2016, the JIT gave a press conference in which it concluded that the aircraft was shot down with a 9M38 Buk missile fired from a rebel-controlled field near Pervomaisky (Первомайський), a town south of Snizhne. It also found the Buk missile system used had been transported from Russia into Ukraine on the day of the crash, and then back into Russia after the crash, with one missile less than it arrived with. The JIT said they had identified 100 people, witnesses as well as suspects, who were involved in the movement of the Buk launcher, though they had not yet identified a clear chain of command to assess culpability, which was a matter for ongoing investigation. The Dutch chief prosecutor said "the evidence must stand before a court" which would render final judgement. During the investigation, the JIT recorded and assessed five billion internet pages, interviewed 200 witnesses, collected half a million photos and videos, and analysed 150,000 intercepted phone calls. According to JIT head prosecutor Fred Westerbeke the criminal investigation is based on "immense body of evidence," including testimonies of live witnesses who saw the Buk launcher, primary radar data, original photos and videos.

On 24 May 2018, after extensive comparative research, the JIT concluded that the Buk that shot down the flight came from the Russian 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade in Kursk. The head of the National Investigation Service of the Dutch police asked the eyewitnesses and insiders to share information about the identities of the Buk crew members, the instruction the crew members followed and persons responsible for the operational deployment of the involved Buk on 17 July 2014. According to Dutch Public Prosecution Service, by 24 May 2018 "the authorities of the Russian Federation have ... not reported to the JIT that a Buk of the 53rd Brigade was deployed in Eastern Ukraine and that this Buk downed flight MH17." In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia would analyse the JIT conclusion, but would acknowledge it only if it became party to the investigation. The Russian Ministry of Defence in turn stated that no Russian Buk crossed the border with Ukraine.

On 25 May 2018 the governments of the Netherlands and Australia issued a joint statement in which they laid responsibility on Russia "for its part" in the crash. The Netherlands and Australian foreign ministers stated that they would hold Russia legally responsible for shooting the airliner down. Netherlands Foreign Minister Stef Blok stated that "the government is now taking the next step by formally holding Russia accountable," and, "The Netherlands and Australia today asked Russia to enter into talks aimed at finding a solution that would do justice to the tremendous suffering and damage caused by the downing of MH17. A possible next step is to present the case to an international court or organization for their judgment."

Several other countries and international organisations expressed their support for the JIT's conclusions and the joint statement by the Netherlands and Australia. UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the United Kingdom "fully supports Australia and the Netherlands," calling on Russia to cooperate. High Representative Federica Mogherini of the EU stated that the European Union "calls on the Russian Federation to accept its responsibility" and to cooperate as well. The German government called on Russia to "fully explain the tragedy." The US Department of State issued a statement saying that the United States "strongly support the decisions by the Netherlands and Australia," requesting Russia to acknowledge its involvement and to "cease its callous disinformation campaign." NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called on Russia to "accept responsibility and fully cooperate ... in line with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2166."

In response to the JIT's conclusions, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated that the Russians are "not involved in it." Following release of the JIT report, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir said the JIT was making Russia a "scapegoat" and that he did not believe the Russians whom the JIT had charged were involved. Conversely the Malaysian prosecutor supported the investigation by saying the findings "are based on extensive investigations and also legal research".

Proposed international tribunal

In June 2015, the Netherlands, supported by the other JIT members, sought to create an international tribunal to prosecute those suspected of downing the Malaysian airliner, which would take up the case after the closing of the criminal investigation. The Dutch hoped that an international tribunal would induce Russian cooperation, which was considered critical. In late June 2015, the Russian government rejected a request by the five countries on the investigative committee to form a UN tribunal which would try those responsible for the shooting down of the aircraft, calling it "not timely and counterproductive." On 8 July 2015, Malaysia, a member of the UN Security Council, distributed a draft resolution to establish such a tribunal. This resolution was jointly proposed by the five JIT member countries. Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin responded, "I don't see any future for this resolution. Unfortunately, it seems that this is an attempt to organize a grandiose, political show, which only damages efforts to find the guilty parties." Russia later circulated a rival resolution which criticised the international investigation's lack of "due transparency" and demanded those responsible be brought to justice, but which did not call for a tribunal. In a vote, Malaysia's resolution gained majority support of the UNSC, but was vetoed by Russia.

Criminal prosecution

In a statement made on 5 July 2017 by the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Bert Koenders, it was announced that the JIT countries would prosecute any suspects identified in the downing of flight MH17 in the Netherlands and under Dutch law. A treaty between the Netherlands and Ukraine made it possible for the Netherlands to prosecute in the cases of all 298 victims, regardless of their nationality. This treaty was signed on 7 July 2017, and went into force on 28 August 2018. On 21 March 2018, the Dutch government sent legislation to the parliament, allowing the suspects involved to be prosecuted in the Netherlands under Dutch law.

On 19 June 2019, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service charged four people with murder in connection with the shooting down of the aircraft: three Russians, Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinsky, and Oleg Pulatov, and one Ukrainian, Leonid Kharchenko. International arrest warrants were issued in respect of each of the accused. One of the suspects, Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Pulatov, expressed his intention to join the legal process by being represented in court. Hearings in the trial began at the District Court of The Hague on 9 March 2020, with none of the accused in attendance. Igor Girkin gave an interview to journalist Graham Phillips saying he would not attend the trial because he did not recognise the court's jurisdiction over Russian citizens. He said that he was not involved in the shoot-down, and that he considered the government of Ukraine to be responsible for the loss of life, because "only a moron or a criminal would send an airliner into a zone of active hostilities".

In July 2019 SBU arrested Vladimir Tsemakh, head of air defence in DPR-controlled Snizhne during the attack on MH17. Bellingcat described him as an important eye-witness to the events surrounding the downing of flight MH17. Bellingcat analysed his possible role and said that a video showed Tsemakh making "what appears to be a damning admission to his personal involvement in hiding the Buk missile launcher in the aftermath of its use on 17 July 2014". In August 2019 Russia reportedly added Tsemakh to its list in a previously agreed exchange of prisoners of war with Ukraine. In an article, '' The Insider'' website commented on Russia's motives in requesting the exchange of a Ukrainian citizen. On 4 September 2019, an appeals court in Kyiv ruled to release Tsemakh. On 7 September 2019, Tsemakh was released during a Ukraine-Russia prisoner exchange. According to the Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok, the exchange had been delayed for a week so that Tsemakh could be questioned by the Dutch Public Prosecution Service as a witness about the events surrounding the downing of flight MH17. The Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, the Minister of Justice and Security Ferd Grapperhaus, the JIT, and Blok added that the Netherlands regretted Tsemakh, who is a 'person of interest', being included in the exchange due to pressure on Ukraine from Russia. Piet Ploeg, Chairman of the victims' relatives organisation "Stichting Vliegramp MH17", called Tsemakh's release "unacceptable". The Dutch Public Prosecution Service (OM) requested that Tsemakh, who is not a Russian citizen, be extradited from Russia to the Netherlands. On 14 November 2019 the JIT published a new witnesses appeal and simultaneously released a number of recorded conversations of rebel leaders. JIT was particularly interested in "the command structure and the role that Russian government officials may have played."

A number of witness statements, especially from the DPR armed forces, were presented anonymously due to fear of reprisal from Russia. Although the Russian secret service attempted to hack into the Malaysian Attorney-General's office, investigation files of the Australian Federal Police and offices at The Hague, prosecutors say the identities of the witnesses still remained secure. The Dutch court, on considering defendant Oleg Pulatov's appeal against anonymous testimony, allowed twelve anonymous witness statements in the trial but barred the anonymous testimony of one witness.

On 7 June 2021, the trial moved on to the evidence phase, during which lawyers and judges will discuss their findings. Witnesses were called in to supply additional information. On 21 December 2021, the Prosecution recommended life sentences for four suspects accused of downing the plane.

The trial reconvened on 7 March 2022, with the defence presenting oral arguments. On 17 November 2022, the court handed down life sentences to three defendants, Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy and Leonid Kharchenko for the murder of 298 passengers and crew. A fourth defendant, Oleg Pulatov, was acquitted on grounds of insufficient involvement in the incident. The presiding judge, Hendrik Steenhuis, said the court had concluded that MH17 was shot down by a Russian-made BUK missile launched from an agricultural field in eastern Ukraine, citing extensive evidence that did not leave "any possibility for reasonable doubt whatsoever" and that Russia had overall control of the separatist forces in eastern Ukraine when the plane was shot down.

European Court of Human Rights

On 10 July 2020, the Dutch government announced that it intended to take Russia to the European Court of Human Rights for "its role in the downing" of Flight MH17. By doing so, it said, it was "offering maximum support" to the individual cases already brought to the Court by the victims' families.

Convention on aviation legal action

On 14 March 2022, Australia and the Netherlands announced that they had launched a joint legal action against Russia under Article 84 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation.

British ISC report

On 20 December 2017, the Intelligence and Security Committee of the UK Parliament published its annual report. It contains a section titled "Russian objectives and activity against UK and allied interests" which quotes MI6 as stating: "Russia conducts information warfare on a massive scale... An early example of this was a hugely intensive, multichannel propaganda effort to persuade the world that Russia bore no responsibility for the shooting down of alaysian Airlines flightMH-17 (an outright falsehood: we know beyond any reasonable doubt that the Russian military supplied and subsequently recovered the missile launcher)".

Identification of command figures

In December 2017, the Russian investigative portal '' The Insider'', the news agency McClatchyDC, and Bellingcat performed a joint investigation that confirmed the identity of a high-ranking military officer using a call-sign "Dolphin" to be Colonel General Nikolai Fedorovich Tkachev. Tkachev is heard supervising the operation of Buk delivery and set-up in wiretaps acquired by JIT. In April 2020 the same three teams identified another high-ranking figure in the chain of command referred to by many DPR and LPR operatives as "Vladimir Ivanovich" to be FSB Colonel General Andrey Ivanovich Burlaka, first deputy chief of the Russian border service.

Civil cases

In July 2015 a writ was filed in an American court by families of 18 victims accusing the separatist leader Igor Girkin of "orchestrating the shootdown" and the Russian government of being complicit in the act. The writ was brought under the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991. In May 2016 families of 33 victims of the crash filed a claim against Russia and president Vladimir Putin in the European Court of Human Rights, arguing Russian actions violated the passengers' right to life. A group of 270 relatives of Dutch victims joined the claim in May 2018 after the JIT concluded that Russia was involved. The Dutch government supported this claim by taking Russia to the European Court of Human Rights in July 2020. In July 2016, Malaysia Airlines was sued in Malaysia by 15 passengers' families in two separate writs, each brought under the Montreal Convention, arguing that the airline should not have chosen that route. A month earlier, a separate lawsuit was brought by the families of six crew members who alleged negligence and breach of contract by the airline.

Reactions

Countries

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called the crash the result of an act of terrorism, and also called for an international investigation into the crash.

Malaysian Deputy Foreign Minister Hamzah Zainuddin said that the foreign ministry would be working with the Russian and Ukrainian governments with regard to the incident. Prime Minister Najib Razak said that Malaysia was unable yet to verify the cause of the crash but that, if the airliner was shot down, the perpetrators should be swiftly punished. The Malaysian government flew the national flag at half-mast from 18 July until 21 July.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and King Willem-Alexander voiced their shock at the crash, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Frans Timmermans joined the Dutch investigation team sent to Ukraine. Dutch government buildings flew the flag at half-mast on 18 July. Music was cancelled and festivities were toned down on the last day of the Nijmegen Marches. On 21 July the Netherlands opened a war crimes investigation on the downing of the aircraft and a Netherlands public prosecutor went to Ukraine as part of this investigation. Rutte threatened tough action against Russia if it did not help in the investigation. On the same day, Timmermans spoke at the UN Security Council Meeting, after the council had unanimously condemned the shooting down of MH17. An increase in negative emotions and somatic complaints was observed in the Dutch population during the first four days after the MH17 crash.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said in an address to parliament that the aircraft was downed by a missile which seemed to have been launched by Russian-backed rebels. Julie Bishop, the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, said in an interview on Australian television that it was "extraordinary" that her Russian counterparts had refused to discuss the downing of MH17 when the Russian ambassador was summoned to meet her. The Russian government was critical of Abbott's response; Abbott was one of the first world leaders to publicly connect the shoot-down to Russia. Abbott later criticised the recovery efforts as "shambolic", and "more like a garden clean-up than a forensic investigation"; Bishop publicly warned separatist forces against treating the victims' bodies as hostages. Abbott also said in an interview on 13 October 2014, in anticipation of Russia's President Vladimir Putin's attendance at the 2014 G20 summit, scheduled for mid-November 2014 in Brisbane, Australia: "Australians were murdered. They were murdered by Russian-backed rebels using Russian-supplied equipment. We are very unhappy about this."

Russian President Putin said that Ukraine bore responsibility for the incident which happened in its territory, which he said would not have happened if hostilities had not resumed in the south-east of Ukraine. At the end of July, State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev said in an interview for ''Die Welt'' that the separatists had shot down the airliner by mistake and that Putin now realised he had supplied the weapon to the "wrong people". The Danish Institute for International Studies has pointed out to the similarities of Russian reaction to the downing of Korean Airlines flight KAL-007 in 1983 where the USSR initially denied any involvement.

United States President Barack Obama said the United States would help determine the cause. In a press statement, White House spokesman Josh Earnest