12 Years Ago, russia Shot Down Flight MH17 Over Donbas

On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 – a Boeing 777 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur – was shot down by a Buk surface-to-air missile over the russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region. All 298 people aboard were killed, among them 80 children.

The Joint Investigation Team traced the Buk system to russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade. It was moved from russia into occupied Donbas, fired, and hurriedly hauled back across the border the same night.

In November 2022, a court in The Hague sentenced Igor Girkin (Strelkov), Sergey Dubinsky, and Leonid Kharchenko to life imprisonment in absentia.

Twelve years on, despite the investigation’s findings and the court’s verdict, russia still denies responsibility for one of the deadliest aviation disasters of the 21st century.