Three men found guilty of murdering 298 people in shooting down of MH17

A Dutch court has found three men guilty of the murder of 298 people onboard flight MH17, which was shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile when it was flying over eastern Ukraine in 2014.

A third Russian national, Oleg Pulatov, was acquitted of the charges owing to lack of evidence about his role in the firing of the missile.

The court found that Russia had overall control of the separatist forces in eastern Ukraine at the time when the plane was shot down, he said.

The verdict caps a 32-month trial that began in March 2020 in a secure courtroom at Schiphol airport, from where flight MH17 took off on 17 July 2014 bound for Kuala Lumpur.

Only a few hours into the flight, a missile exploded just above and to the left of the cockpit, causing the plane to break up in midair, according to an international investigation. Everyone onboard was killed.

The victims came from 17 countries and included 198 Dutch nationals, 43 Malaysians, 38 Australians and 10 from the UK. They were from all walks of life: families with children, young couples and retirees on the holiday of a lifetime, teenagers celebrating the end of exams, professionals heading to conferences, a nun, a shipping worker going home. Eighty of the victims were children.

During the trial, relatives of the victims gave testimony to the court, in person and through video link, of their overwhelming grief and how their lives changed for ever when they found out their loved one had been onboard MH17.

Some lost the main breadwinner in their family, adding financial pressure to mental anguish. Grief was compounded, several said, by misinformation from the Russian government and refusal of the defendants to take responsibility.

The Netherlands and Australia said in 2018 that Russia was responsible for the disaster, after investigators concluded the BUK missile had come from a Russian military base.

The Kremlin has always denied any involvement, while claiming it was excluded from the investigation.

Girkin, who goes by the nom de guerre Igor Strelkov, was a commander of the separatist-backed forces in 2014. He is believed to have returned to the battlefield in Ukraine, raising slim hopes that he may be captured and eventually face justice.

Kharchenko was a commander of a combat unit in Donetsk and took his orders from Dubinskiy.

The fatal chain of events for MH17 began to unfold on the night of 16-17 July when a BUK was smuggled across the border from Russia to Ukraine and transported to Donetsk, according to prosecutors.