Ten years ago, 298 people died when pro-Russian rebels shot down a plane over the embattled eastern Ukraine. The dead are being remembered in Amsterdam. Clear tones are being sent to Moscow.
Ten years after the shooting down of passenger flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, the 298 dead were commemorated in the Netherlands and Ukraine. In the presence of King Willem-Alexander, relatives read out the names of all the victims at the national monument near Amsterdam Airport.
Representatives of the Netherlands and Australia reiterated that Russia must be held responsible for shooting down the Boeing. 196 victims were from the Netherlands, 38 from Australia. Four Germans were killed.
On July 17, 2014, the Malaysia Airlines Boeing was shot down by pro-Russian rebels with a Russian anti-aircraft missile over contested territory in eastern Ukraine on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. According to international investigations, the Buk anti-aircraft system was brought from a Russian military base across the border into eastern Ukraine and transported back after it was shot down. It was still the initial phase of the fighting that would eventually escalate into Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine in 2022.
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof promised that the affected countries’ fight for justice would continue tirelessly. “We have time, patience, and determination.” Australia’s Attorney General Mark Dreyfus also reiterated that everything would be done to hold Russia to account. “There were 298 innocent people,” said the chairman of the association of the bereaved, Piet Ploeg. “For ten years we will have to miss them, ten years of a permanent empty space.”
Hundreds attended the memorial service, including relatives of the victims and representatives of the most affected countries: the Netherlands, Malaysia, Australia, Great Britain, Belgium and Ukraine. People laid sunflowers at the monument, which is surrounded by 298 trees. Debris from the plane and human remains had fallen into sunflower fields. Photos show how flowers were also laid at the crash site of Hrabove. The village in the Donetsk region is under Russian occupation.
The Ukrainian leadership in Kiev also recalled the tragedy. “It has been ten years since Russian murderers shot down the passenger plane MH17 over the skies of Ukraine. The whole world saw then who started the war against Ukraine,” wrote President Volodymyr Zelenskyj on the social network X. The Russian evil is a threat not only to his country. Russia has tried from the beginning to conceal its involvement with a “kill, lie and deny” strategy, the Foreign Ministry said.
Two Russians and a Ukrainian were sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia by a Dutch court in 2022 for 298 counts of murder. Russia denies any responsibility and also refuses to extradite the men. Moscow maintains that it was excluded from the investigations. “The Russian side’s findings were not taken into account, we did not participate in the investigation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said again on the anniversary. In fact, over the years, Moscow has circulated numerous, sometimes contradictory, versions of the shooting and tried to thwart the Dutch-led investigation.
