Court in The Hague finds Girkin, Dubinsky and Kharchenko guilty of destroying MH17

The court in The Hague, after the start of the announcement of the verdict in the criminal case of a Boeing 777 shot down in the sky over Ukraine, which was on flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Malaysian Kuala Lumpur, said that it had already been determined where the shot was fired from.

“The court is of the opinion that the Boeing crashed while launching a missile from the Buk air defense system from a field near the village of Pervomaisky,” Judge Hendrik Steinhuis said. The defendants in this case are Russians Igor Girkin (Strelkov), Sergey Dubinsky (Khmury), Oleg Pulatov (Gyurza) and Ukrainian citizen Leonid Kharchenko Krot.

The Hague court found everyone guilty, except for Pulatov, and also imposed a fine of 16 million euros on them. The court concluded that Pulatov was innocent and rejected the prosecutor’s demand that he be imprisoned.

None of the defendants in the case pleaded guilty for eight years, did not appear in court, and the process is in absentia. The district court of The Hague is considering a criminal case, and court hearings are held in the Schiphol complex, which is located near the international airport of the same name, where a memorial complex was opened in memory of the victims of the disaster.

The Boeing was shot down on July 17, 2014 in a war zone in eastern Ukraine, 50 km from the border with Russia, four months after the start of the conflict between Kyiv and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR). There were 298 people on board, all of them died.

An International Investigation Team (JIT) was assembled for the investigation, which included representatives of law enforcement agencies from Ukraine, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia and Malaysia.

From the conclusions of the 2016 JIT, it follows that the liner was shot down by representatives of the DPR militia with a 9M38 Buk missile: these investigators refer to the fact that it was sent from the area of ​​​​the village of Pervomaisky, which at that time was controlled by the militias. Already in 2019, the investigation announced that the air defense system belongs to the Russian 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade stationed in Kursk.

The Hague court said that the Buk from which MH17 was shot down was allegedly brought from Russia to Ukraine, and then taken back. It is impossible to establish the actions of the SAM crew, and it is also unclear who gave the command to launch the rocket, the judge added.

“Unfortunately, we are not allowed to a full-fledged investigation, so we have no reason to fully trust the results of this investigation. We do not take part in it,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said about the JIT data in 2018. At the same time, as he noted, Boeing was not shot down by a Russian missile, and Ukraine did not comply with ICAO requirements and did not close its airspace.

In 2018, the Russian Ministry of Defense noted that Utes-T, which was operating in the Rostov region on July 17, 2014, near the village of Ust-Donetsky, did not record the approach of any air objects to the aircraft from the east side, including including from the settlements of Snezhnoye or Pervomayskoye. Also, the military department claimed that no air defense systems of the Russian Armed Forces crossed the border.

Later, representatives of the defense, in particular, the lawyer of the Russian Oleg Pulatov, Sabine ten Dusshate, argued that it was “technically possible to shoot down” the plane with a Buk missile from the Ukrainian-controlled Zaroshchenske checkpoint.

Russia will study the decision of the Dutch court, Ivan Nechaev, deputy director of the information and press department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, said on November 17.

In March, Australia and the Netherlands filed a joint complaint against Russia with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as part of the MH17 crash case. The parties also want ICAO to “order Russian officials to immediately enter into good faith negotiations” to resolve the issue of full compensation for damages to all affected parties. The amount is not specified.