The downing of MH17
The Netherlands said on April 16 that, with nearly all of the victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) identified, efforts had shifted to finding those responsible for shooting the plane down over Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board. In March, Dutch media had reported that a metal fragment from the crash site matches a Russian-made rocket. On April 22 it was reported that more remains had been found at the crash site. The Dutch Justice Ministry said in a statement that along with human remains investigators also found passengers’ jewelry, passports and photographs.
On May 13, evidence emerged that a large Russian military convoy that traveled to eastern Ukraine in June 2014 had brought Buk anti-aircraft systems to Russia-backed separatists. That was a month before MH17 was downed. A group of pro-Ukrainian citizen activists published a report purportedly identifying a Russian soldier who was a driver in that convoy and showing photographs of Buk systems being escorted across Russia to Ukraine. Eliot Higgins, the founder of the citizen’s journalism website Bellingcat, said the information jibed well with Bellingcat’s own probes into the convoy that allegedly brought the Buk systems to eastern Ukraine, including the one he believes was used to shoot down MH17. “We’ve been looking at this same convoy, and there’s quite a lot of interesting information,” Mr. Higgins told RFE/RL. “We’ve found much, much more additional material. We’ve got the names of the people who were in the convoy. We’ve got a good idea of which vehicles they were driving. In fact, the guy who they feature in the article was actually almost certainly driving just one vehicle in front of the actual missile launcher that [we believe] shot down MH17.”
On July 2, Malaysia told the United Nations Security Council that it planned to push for a U.N.-backed tribunal to prosecute those suspected of shooting down MH17. The proposal was developed jointly by the five nations investigating the downing. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, whose country had the greatest number of nationals among the victims of the crash, said a U.N. tribunal is “the best option to prosecute those responsible for the MH17 disaster, as it is the best chance to get them before a court of law.”
On the first anniversary of MH17’s downing, Ukrainians, a deeply religious nation, mourned the citizens of 11 countries who had perished. Local residents in the towns where the plane’s remnants, and passengers’ bodies, rained from the sky, had erected memorials and they continued to pray for the repose of the souls of the passengers and crew. Memorial services were held throughout Ukraine; in Kyiv, people laid flowers on the steps of the Dutch Embassy. President Poroshenko explained in an address that “the Ukrainian people took this catastrophe as a personal tragedy.”
At the same time, previously unseen video footage was released by News Corp. Australia of “separatists” sifting through the wreckage of MH17 soon after it was shot down by a Buk missile, realizing that this was a civilian aircraft, and then callously going through the belongings of the dead. Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said it was “sickening to watch.” The country’s prime minister, Tony Abbott, said the images show the downing was an atrocity – that the rebels were “deliberately shooting out of the sky what they knew was a large aircraft.” Mr. Abbott stated that he had no doubt the aircraft was shot down with a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile because “rebels don’t get hold of this kind of weaponry by accident. I mean, this was obviously very sophisticated weaponry.”
Then, on July 29, Russia vetoed a U.N. draft resolution to create an international tribunal to investigate and try those responsible for firing the missile believed to have brought down MH17. Eleven other Security Council members backed the proposal by Malaysia, Australia, the Netherlands and Ukraine, while Angola, China and Venezuela abstained. The supporters of the resolution were three out of the five permanent members of the Security Council: France, the United Kingdom, the United States; and eight of the 10 non-permanent members: Chad, Chile, Jordan, Lithuania, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria and Spain. Dutch Prime Minister Rutte said Russia had “failed to stand up and be counted in the quest for international justice.” He added that countries involved in a Dutch-led investigation will now focus on other legal options “at both the international and national level… supported by a broad international coalition” because “the perpetrators… must not be allowed to escape punishment.”
The long awaited Dutch Safety Board report on the MH17 disaster was released on October 13. It said the passenger plane was downed by a Russian-made Buk missile. It did not specify the exact location from which the missile was fired, but it did identity a 320-square-kilometer area mostly under the control of the separatists at the time. The missile detonated less than a meter to the left of the aircraft’s cockpit, according to the report, killing the pilots instantly and causing the aircraft to break apart.
Board head Tjibbe Joustra stressed that investigators sought to answer the question of why Malaysia Airlines was flying over a conflict zone. He said the airline should have recognized the risks, but noted that the carrier was not alone: 61 airlines were flying over eastern Ukraine at the time, in the apparent belief that their aircraft were flying at high enough altitudes to avoid danger. Mr. Joustra also said Kyiv should have closed the air space over eastern Ukraine because of the conflict with pro-Russian separatists. Predictably, the Kremlin criticized the report and investigation as “biased,” with Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Ryabkov saying that, despite Moscow’s efforts to organize an MH17 probe, “there are obvious attempts to carry out a political order.”
Maidan anniversaries
In 2015, Ukraine marked the first anniversary of the massacre on the Maidan, when security forces of the Yanukovych regime killed over 100 people. President Poroshenko designated February 20, the day most of the victims lost their lives, as an official day of remembrance. RFE/RL reported: Church bells rang across the country and a minute of silence was held. Hundreds of people marched in Kyiv to honor their memory, and mourners laid flowers and candles at sites where protesters were shot dead. A religious service was held in Independence Square, where the protests took place. Another religious service took place at a church situated on a nearby street that saw some of the worst bloodshed. Mr. Poroshenko addressed the nation later in the day from Independence Square, promising to “do the maximum I can, so those huge loses our people suffered during the past year won’t be wasted. We will stop the war and within the few years everyone will notice how Ukraine is changing.”
Dalia Grybauskaite/Facebook
Foreign leaders join with Ukraine’s president on February 22 in the city center of Kyiv to remember the fallen on the first anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity.
In November, the country noted the second anniversary of the beginning of the Euro-Maidan movement. Unfortunately, the anniversary also brought to the fore the fact that not a single conviction had come about against those who perpetrated violent events on the Maidan resulting from the authorities’ crackdown on what came to be known as the Revolution of Dignity. “Was it necessary to wait until the second anniversary of the Maidan to announce what we already knew on the Maidan?!” Oleh Rybachuk, a former head of the Presidential Secretariat, wrote on the gazeta.ua news site. “The law enforcement bodies aren’t reformed,” he added.