MH17 shot down by Buk missile launched from occupied Donbas, says Dutch judge
According to presiding judge Hendrik Steenhuis, the plane was shot down from an agricultural field in eastern Ukraine.
He noted that Russia oversaw the training of the puppet authority’s armed forces and provided it with a supply of weapons.
The court sees the downing as part of an international armed conflict that took place on the territory of Ukraine in 2014-2015, Steenhuis announced.
The final verdict in the MH17 case will be announced later on Nov. 17.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, a Boeing-777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down by the Russian military on July 17, 2014, over a non-government-controlled area of the Donbas. There were no survivors among the 283 passengers and 15 crew members.
The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) was established in August 2014, which included Russian representatives. In July 2015, Russia blocked the UN Security Council’s proposal to create an international tribunal to investigate the MH17 downing.
In 2016, the JIT concluded that MH17 was downed by a Buk anti-aircraft missile system launched from around the city of Snizhne, Donetsk Oblast. Investigators say that the missile system was supplied and delivered to eastern Ukraine by Russia.
In early 2020 Dutch prosecutors charged four individuals in the MH17 case, who are often referred to in evidence materials by their noms de guerre: Sergey “Hmuriy” Dubinsky, Igor “Strelkov” Girkin, Oleg “Guyrza” Pulatov and Leonid “Krot” Kharchenko.
Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine
