European Court Holds Russia Responsible for Downing of Flight MH17

A European court on Wednesday found Russia responsible for the 2014 downing of a passenger jet over eastern Ukraine as well as broader human rights violations related to its war on its neighbor, rulings that were largely symbolic but highlighted Moscow’s increasing isolation.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled in four cases filed by Ukraine and the Netherlands against Russia over its meddling in Ukraine, from the Flight MH17 disaster to the transporting of Ukrainian children to Russia.

The court’s conclusions shed light on the scale of Russian involvement in separatist fighting in eastern Ukraine in 2014 — years before its full-scale invasion in 2022.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down over separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine in July 2014, killing all 298 people on board, most of them Dutch. In 2022, a Dutch court found that a so-called Buk antiaircraft missile system provided to separatist forces by the Russian military had brought down the Boeing 777.

In May this year, the U.N.’s aviation body found Russia responsible for the downing.

In its unanimous ruling, the European court said that the missile was fired “either by a member of the Russian military crew of the Buk truck” or Russia-backed separatists. The court said it was “not necessary” for it to examine who exactly fired missile, since the Russian state controlled both its military and the separatists.

The Dutch foreign ministry in a statement on Wednesday hailed the verdict as “an important step on the road to justice.”

The court also found Russia responsible for “widespread and flagrant abuses of human rights” in Ukraine since 2014, including summary executions, torture, rape, looting and the “transfer to Russia, and in many cases, the adoption there of Ukrainian children.”

Asked about the ruling, the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry S. Peskov, told Russian news agencies that Moscow considered them “null and void” and has “no intention to abide by it.”

Russia is no longer bound by rulings of the court, part of the 46-member Council of Europe, as it was kicked out of the institution shortly after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Top Russian officials including President Vladimir V. Putin have vehemently denied any role in the downing of MH17 and insisted that Russia troops had not even been deployed to Ukraine to prop up the separatists.

Evidence unsealed at the Dutch trial showed, however, that the surface-to-air missile was supplied by the Russian Army and taken across the border. The separatists did not have such sophisticated weaponry of their own, and a key separatist figure bragged about shooting down a Ukrainian plane around the time the plane went down.

The Dutch court sentenced three men with ties to the Russian security services to life in prison for shooting down the plane. A fourth man was acquitted. All the defendants were tried in absentia.

Over the years, Russia has generated a series of often contradictory theories about what happened to the MH17 flight, blaming Ukraine for the plane crash.

Igor Girkin, one of the defendants in the Dutch trial, has repeatedly denied his involvement. The former Russian intelligence officer, who was a separatist leader at the time of the downing, has said “rebels” had no role in the downing but never said outright that the Russian military did not either.

Mr. Girkin has been jailed in Russia since 2023 over his criticism of officials handling the war in Ukraine.

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