The Dutch Safety Board has released its long-awaited report on the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. As a result, the world knows what happened, but not who is directly responsible. A separate criminal investigation, scheduled to conclude in 2016, is to determine culpability for the act, which killed all 298 people on board.
The report concluded that a Russian-made surface-to-air missile, known as a Buk, brought down the passenger plane and that it was fired from somewhere within a 320-square-kilometer area – most of which was under the control of Russian-backed militants. Another finding was that airlines should have recognized the danger of flying over a conflict zone. The Dutch board’s head, Tjibbe Joustra, noted that Malaysia Airlines was not alone: 61 airlines were flying over eastern Ukraine at the time, apparently believing that their planes were flying at high enough altitudes to avoid danger. Indeed, about 160 civilian planes flew over the area on the very day of the disaster. In the wake of the disaster, the International Civil Aviation Organization set up a task force to examine the risks to civil aviation from conflict zones; its first recommendation was to create a website where countries could share their information on conflict zones on their territories.
The 279-page report was the result of 15 months of investigation. As reported by The Guardian, the Netherlands, Ukraine and Russia had all carried out their own simulations into the missile’s probable trajectory. Russia was the only one of the seven countries involved in the report’s preparation that dissented from its central conclusions. All the while, Russia has suggested all sorts of incredible theories about the crash – all suggesting, of course, that Ukraine was responsible for the downing, ranging from the notion that a Ukrainian fighter jet shot down MH17 to the suggestion that a missile was launched from a Ukrainian-government controlled area. Earlier versions even floated the idea that the goal had been to shoot down a plane flying Vladimir Putin or that the CIA had downed a plane full of corpses. Sadly, the Russian public knows only the Kremlin’s disinformation; a recent poll by the Levada Center found that 44 percent of Russians believe the plane was shot down by the Ukrainian military, 41 percent thought it was the work of the Ukrainian government, 17 percent thought the U.S. was responsible, 3 percent believed it was the DNR separatists’ doing and 2 percent thought it was the result of Russia helping the separatists (multiple answers were allowed).
The U.S. said the Dutch report’s release was a “an important milestone in the effort to hold accountable those responsible for the shoot-down of the aircraft and the killing of those aboard.” It praised the inquiry, saying, “This independent investigation has been conducted in accordance with international standards and recommended practices in a professional manner by the Dutch Safety Board authorities, and serves as a basis for further investigations to identify those responsible for the deaths of 298 innocent men, women and children.”
Ukraine agreed with conclusions regarding the Buk, but Hennadiy Zubko, head of Ukraine’s MH17 investigation, said Ukraine was following established procedures: “All the recommendations from the [International Civil Aviation Organization] were carried out… Ukraine closed its airspace below 9,750 meters.” Foreign Affairs Minister Pavlo Klimkin said, “No one at this time…was even aware” of the possibility that Russian-backed rebels had obtained highly sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles.
Predictably, Moscow continues to blame Kyiv, alleging that the missile could not have been fired from separatist-controlled area and that the missile fragments found were from an older Buk model no longer in service in the Russian military. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte called on Russia to cooperate in the investigation, but that is hardly likely, as Russian had recently vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution on a probe of the shootdown and Russia’s Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister called the just-issued report “an obvious attempt to draw a biased conclusion and carry out political orders.” It was also Russia and its proxies in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that had compromised the crime scene, tampered with evidence, looted the site and denied investigators access, engaged in a cover-up, questioned the impartiality of the Dutch-led investigation and said that establishing an international tribunal to deal with the case would be “premature” and “counterproductive.” Need we say more?
The truth of the matter is that Russia is a state sponsor of terrorism, including the terrorist act of shooting down a civilian aircraft. No one should forget that. As the criminal investigation into the downing of MH17 continues, our fervent hope is that justice will be served.