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There are “strong indications” that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself approved the supply of the missile that brought down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014, international investigators said on Wednesday.
The BUK-TELAR missile system was used to shoot down the passenger plane en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, the six-country Joint Investigation Team investigating the crash said.
All 298 passengers and crew were killed when the missile slammed into the plane, bringing it down to the ground. Russia has denied any involvement.
“There are strong indications that the Russian president decided to supply the Buk TELAR to the separatists of the DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic),” the investigators’ statement read.
But despite this, prosecutors said today that they would suspend the criminal investigation of the incident, claiming that they do not have enough evidence to initiate new proceedings.
FILE – In this July 17, 2014 file photo, people walk through the rubble at the crash site of a passenger plane near the town of Hrabove, Ukraine.
FILE PHOTO: Local workers carry the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 at the plane crash site near the village of Hrabove (Grabovo) in Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, November 20, 2014.
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the Security Council via video link at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia, February 3, 2023.
The Buk missile is fired in an animated recreation by Dutch researchers
Dutch prosecutor Digna van Boetzelaer said that “the investigation has reached its limit. All leads dried up when the team began to expose the evidence they uncovered in their lengthy investigation.
The bomb announcement comes nearly three months after a Dutch court convicted two Russians and a Ukrainian rebel for their role in the July 17, 2014 downing of a Boeing 777.
A Russian was acquitted by the court.
None of the suspects appeared for trial and it was unclear if the three who were found guilty of multiple murders will ever serve their sentences.
One of the men found guilty, Igor ‘Strelkov’ Girkin, is a former security service officer who served as one of the main architects of Putin’s annexation of Crimea, and is now a vocal supporter and military strategist in middle of the war in Ukraine.
The convictions and the court’s finding that the Buk surface-to-air missile that downed the Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur flight came from a Russian military base were seen as a clear indication that Moscow played a role in the tragedy.
The Russian Foreign Ministry accused the court in November of caving in to pressure from Dutch politicians, prosecutors and the media amid the war in Ukraine.
But the November indictments held that Moscow had overall control in 2014 over the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, the breakaway area of eastern Ukraine where the missile was launched.
The Buk missile system came from the Russian Army’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, based in the city of Kursk.
Lawyers attend the judges’ inspection of the reconstruction of the MH17 wreckage, as part of the murder trial before the start of a critical phase, in Reijen, the Netherlands, in May 2021.
Two former Russian intelligence officers, Igor Girkin (top left) and Sergey Dubinskiy (top right), as well as Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko (bottom right), who worked for Putin, were found guilty of murdering the 289 people on board the Boeing 777. A third former Russian intelligence officer, Oleg Pulatov (bottom left), was acquitted by the Dutch court
The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) is made up of experts from the Netherlands, Australia, Malaysia, Belgium and Ukraine, although Dutch prosecutors took the lead because most of the victims were Dutch.
The victims of the disaster came from 10 countries, including 196 Dutch, 43 Malaysian and 38 Australian residents.
The JIT has continued to investigate the crew of the Russian Buk missile system that brought down the plane and those who ordered its deployment in Ukraine.
“Indications of close ties between the leaders of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Russian government officials raise questions about their involvement in the deployment” of the missile, the Netherlands Public Ministry said on its website.
He cited intercepted phone calls between leaders of the breakaway region and “high-ranking Russian government officials detained in the summer of 2014.”
In addition to the criminal trial that took place in the Netherlands, the Dutch and Ukrainian governments are suing Russia at the European Court of Human Rights for its alleged role in the downing of MH17.