A Dutch court on Thursday convicted three men with ties to the Russian security services and sentenced them to life in prison over the downing of a passenger jet above eastern Ukraine in July 2014, during a Moscow-backed separatist uprising that foreshadowed Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country. The court found that an antiaircraft missile system provided to separatist forces by the Russian military brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, commonly known as MH17, on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, killing all 298 people aboard. The crash was by far the biggest loss of civilian life in the conflict up to that time, eliciting global outrage. Some of the victims’ families have suggested that the West’s failure to punish Moscow back then is in part responsible for the invasion of Ukraine and the Russian war crimes that have become a part of everyday life in the country today. “I’ve always said that our family members were the first non-Ukrainian people that were the victims of a war that started eight years ago,” said Piet Ploeg, the chairman of the MH17 Flight Disaster Foundation, representing most family members of the crash victims. And the fact that the convictions came only after eight years of painstaking investigation and judicial proceedings marked by Moscow’s stonewalling highlights the formidable challenges that prosecutors will face again as they try to hold more recent Russian war criminals accountable. Thursday’s verdict offered a bare measure of justice for the victims’ relatives, as the three men convicted are believed to be living in Russia or Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine, where they are unlikely to be apprehended. But the judges did clearly highlight the Kremlin’s role in the crash — it armed separatists in eastern Ukraine and instigated their uprising — and emphasized Russia’s responsibility for the tragedy against the backdrop of the current war. Story has more.<br/>
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Russia on Thursday rejected what it called the "scandalous" decision by a Dutch court to convict two of its citizens for downing a Malaysian airliner and said the proceedings had not been impartial. Judges convicted three men of murder for their role in the 2014 shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers and crew, and sentenced them to life in prison in absentia. The three were former Russian intelligence agents Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy, and Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian separatist leader. The Dutch court also said Russia had "overall control" of separatist forces in eastern Ukraine at the time the plane was shot down. Russia's foreign ministry said the court had been under unprecedented pressure from Dutch politicians, prosecutors and the media to impose a politically motivated outcome. "The trial in the Netherlands has every chance of becoming one of the most scandalous in the history of legal proceedings," it said. Moscow has repeatedly denied responsibility for the downing of the jet. Separately, a top Russian politician told Tass news agency that Moscow would not be extraditing Girkin and Dubinskiy.<br/>
Kyiv welcomed the murder convictions handed out by a Dutch court on Thursday to three men for their role in the 2014 shooting down of a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine, but said those who ordered the attack must face trial. The court in The Hague issued the sentences after saying Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a Russian-made missile fired from a field in eastern Ukraine and that Russia had overall control of separatist forces at the time. "An important decision of the court in The Hague. The first sentences for those responsible for shooting down #MH17," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy wrote on Twitter. "But it is necessary that those who ordered it also end up in the dock because the feeling of impunity leads to new crimes. We have to dispel this illusion. Punishment for all Russian atrocities - both then and now - will be inevitable." The plane was shot down as Russian-backed separatists fought Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine, a region where fighting continues following Russian's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. The three men convicted were former Russian intelligence agents Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinskiy, and Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian separatist leader. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba hailed a "profound joint effort" by Ukraine, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, and Malaysia.<br/>