There is “strong evidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself authorized delivery of the missile that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in 2014, international investigators said on Wednesday.
The BUK-TELAR missile system was used to shoot down the passenger plane en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, according to the joint investigation team from six countries investigating the crash.
All 298 passengers and crew were killed when the missile hit the plane and brought it back to earth. Russia has denied any involvement.
“There are strong indications that the Russian President decided to hand over the Buk TELAR to the DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic) separatists,” the investigators’ statement said.
Despite this, prosecutors today said they would stay the criminal investigation into the incident, claiming they had insufficient evidence to launch new prosecutions.
FILE – People walk among the rubble at the crash site of a passenger plane near the village of Hrabove, Ukraine, in this July 17, 2014 file photo
FILE PHOTO: Local workers transport a piece of wreckage from Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 to the site of the plane crash near the village of Hrabove (Grabovo) in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine November 20, 2014
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the Security Council via video link at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia, February 3, 2023
The Buk missile is fired by the Dutch investigators in an animated replica
Dutch prosecutor Digna van Boetzelaer said that “the investigation has now reached its limits. All leads have been exhausted” as the team began laying the evidence they had uncovered in their long-running investigation.
The bomb announcement comes nearly three months after a Dutch court convicted two Russians and a Ukrainian rebel for their role in the July 17, 2014 downing of the Boeing 777.
A Russian was acquitted by the court.
None of the suspects showed up for the trial and it was unclear if the three, who were convicted of multiple murders, will ever serve their sentences.
One of the men found guilty, Igor “Strelkov” Girkin, is a former security service officer who served as one of the main architects of Putin’s annexation of Crimea and is now a vocal advocate and military strategist amid the war in Ukraine.
The convictions and the court’s finding that the Buk surface-to-air missile that launched the Amsterdam-Kuala Lumpur flight came from a Russian military base were taken as clear evidence that Moscow was involved in the tragedy.
The Russian Foreign Ministry in November accused the court of bowing to pressure from Dutch politicians, prosecutors and news media amid the war in Ukraine.
But the November convictions said Moscow was in overall control of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic in 2014, the separatist area in eastern Ukraine where the missile was fired.
The Buk missile system came from the Russian military’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, based in the city of Kursk.
Lawyers attend the judicial inspection of the reconstruction of the MH17 wreckage as part of the murder trial before a critical phase begins in Reijen, the Netherlands, in May 2021
Two former Russian intelligence officers – Igor Girkin (top left) and Sergey Dubinskiy (top right) – as well as Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko (bottom right), who worked for Putin, have been found guilty of murdering the 289 people on board the Boeing 777 . A third former Russian intelligence officer, Oleg Pulatov (below left), was acquitted by the Dutch court
The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) is made up of experts from the Netherlands, Australia, Malaysia, Belgium and Ukraine, although Dutch prosecutors have taken the lead as most of the victims were Dutch.
The victims of the disaster came from 10 countries, including 196 Dutch, 43 Malaysian and 38 Australian.
The JIT has continued investigations into the crew of Russia’s Buk missile system that downed the plane and those who ordered its deployment to Ukraine.
“The evidence of close ties between the leadership of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Russian government officials raises questions about their involvement in the deployment,” Dutch prosecutors said on their website.
It cites wiretapped telephone conversations between leaders of the breakaway region and “senior Russian government officials detained in the summer of 2014.”
Alongside the criminal case in the Netherlands, the Dutch and Ukrainian governments are taking Russia to the European Court of Human Rights over its alleged role in the downing of MH17.