“Strong Indications” Putin Approved Missile System Transfer

Speaking to the subject of the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service’s Joint Investigation Team set forth on Wednesday, 08 February 2023, that it had identified “strong indications” that Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally approved the decision to provide Ukrainian separatists the Russian-made Buk-TELAR missile system by which MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine.

The investigators stated that in the week’s prior to the MH17 atrocity, leaders of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) appeared to have been in “close contact” with Kremlin advisers and the Russian intelligence service.

During a presentation to the Dutch court, investigators asserted: “After the separatists ask for anti-aircraft guns with higher range, their request is in the second half of June 2014 discussed at the Presidential administration in Moscow. That is a state body that supports the president. After this, the request for a heavier air defense system is presented to the minister of Defense and the president.”

The investigators maintained that the separatists’ request was approved.

“In recorded telephone conversations, Russian government officials say that the decision about military support rests with the president,” the Joint Investigation Team reported. “The decision is even delayed a week ‘because there is only one who makes a decision … the person who is at a summit in France.’ President Putin at that time, on 05 and 06 June 2014, was at the D-Day commemoration in France.”

The team continued: “There is concrete information that the request from the separatists is presented to the president, and that a positive decision is taken. It is unknown whether the request explicitly mentions a Buk system. A short time later, heavy air-defense systems were delivered, including the Buk that later shot down MH17.”

Notwithstanding the newly-found data and the weight of their personal and collective convictions, the investigators conceded “… the high bar of full and conclusive evidence is not met.”

Ergo, a new trial cannot yet be convened.

In any case, Putin, as a head of state, is immune from prosecution.

The Joint Investigation Team’s findings have, however, been shared with the families of MH17’s 298 victims.

On 17 July 2014, a Boeing 777-200ER operating as Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17)—scheduled passenger service from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport (AMS) to Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KUL) in the Malaysian capital city of Kuala Lumpur—was shot down by Russian-controlled forces while passing over eastern Ukraine. The entirety of the aircraft’s 283 passengers and 15 crew-members perished.

Contact with MH17 was lost approximately 27-nautical-miles from the Russo-Ukrainian border, and wreckage from the 777 was recovered near Hrabove in Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast. The tragedy occurred during the war in Donbas over territory controlled by Russian separatist forces.

Responsibility for the investigation of MH17’s downing was delegated to the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) and the Dutch-led joint investigation team (JIT), which reported in 2016 that the airliner had been downed by a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile launched from pro-Russian separatist-controlled territory in Ukraine. The JIT found that the killing missile had been allocated to the Russian Federation’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, transported from Russia to Ukraine on the day of the attack, and fired from a field in a rebel-controlled area near Hrabove. Following the destruction of MH17, the missile’s launch system was hastily returned to Russia.

On the basis of the JIT's conclusions, the governments of the Netherlands and Australia deemed Russia responsible for MH17s downing and, in May 2018, began pursuing legal remedies. Moscow, in addition to repeatedly varying its accounts of how MH17 was brought down, has vehemently and consistently denied involvement in the incident.

In November 2022, a Dutch court sentenced three men to life in prison for the attack on MH17. Though found guilty, Igor Girkin, a former colonel in Russia's FSB intelligence service; Sergei Dubinsky, an employee of Russia's GRU military intelligence agency; and Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian national who commanded a combat unit in Eastern Ukraine despite having no formal military background, are unlikely to be incarcerated insomuch as their convictions were handed down in absentia.

By dint of arcane convolutions peculiar to E.U. criminal law, the trio of suspects refused to take part in the trial, which was held at the Schiphol Judicial Complex in Badhoevedorp, the Netherlands.

The Dutch court’s verdict occasioned the first instance in which an independent judgment was made on the MH17 tragedy. The court found that there was insufficient evidence to determine which of the three suspects had launched the BUK missile, and that the crew likely believed they were firing on a military aircraft, not a passenger jet. However, the court also ruled that the defendants—noncombatants all—were prohibited from shooting down any aircraft, military or civilian, and therefore not entitled to combat immunity.

FMI: www.courtmh17.com