The Joint Investigation Group (JIT) led by the Netherlands together with police and criminal justice agencies from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine on June 19 issued arrest warrants and prosecuted criminal charges. People with 3 Russian citizens and 1 Ukrainian citizen.
These people were accused of bringing the BUK missile system into eastern Ukraine, leading to Malaysia Airlines aircraft crash carrying the number MH17 in 2014, making all 298 people on board. .
Three Russian suspects named Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy, Oleg Pulatov are said to have "hooked up" with Russian intelligence. The other suspect is a Ukrainian citizen named Leonid Kharchenko.
Moscow denies everything related to this disaster. But Western experts asserted from the start that the separatist faction against the Ukrainian government was backed by the outside culprit behind the incident.
Destiny flight
On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 has MH17 number coming from Amsterdam, the Netherlands to Kuala Lumpur is flying through eastern Ukraine airspace, where fierce fighting is taking place. The Ukrainian government and separatist forces, suddenly exploded in the air. All 298 people on the plane have passed the test. This includes 283 passengers and 15 crew members, more than half of whom are Dutch citizens. 15 crew members are all Malaysian.
MH17 aircraft crash case. (Source: New York Times)
Initial documents show that the plane crashed and was about 50 km from Russia’s airspace. An unnamed source said the Boeing was found on the ground in eastern Ukraine and was blackened. Another unnamed source of the Ukrainian security agency said the plane disappeared from the radar screen at an altitude of about 10,000 meters, after it fell near the town of Shakhtyorsk.
This plane happened only four months after another aviation disaster also related to Malaysia, when flight number MH370 mysteriously lost 239 people while on the way from Kuala Lumpur. Lumpur to Beijing. So far, the whereabouts of MH370 have not been found.
The fragments of MH17 show that the aircraft has been dropped by surface-to-air missiles. Five countries affected by this disaster, including Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine jointly launched a joint investigation.
The survey team said that they have evidence that Russia is involved in the plane crash. Moscow has denied any allegations, but at the time, Russia was thought to be providing ammunition to separatist forces in eastern Ukraine and many Russians were fighting with separatists.
Investigators believe that Russia’s BUK missile system has taken down this ill-fated aircraft. They also showed evidence of photos and videos showing that the BUK missile system was brought across the Russian border into Ukrainian territory, then returned to Russia.
In addition, there are many judgments that the separatists have mistaken Malaysian aircraft for Ukrainian military aircraft, because before that, separatists had taken down some Su-25’s aircraft. Ukrainian army.
Who are the suspects?
According to prosecutors, three of the four suspects prosecuted in the case are Russian nationals and are believed to be living in Russia.
JIT announced the identity of four suspects related to the MH17 plane crash. (Source: EPA)
Igor Girkin, codenamed "Strelkov" is the most notable suspect, Girkin was born on December 17, 1970 in Moscow, was Russian national and was a colonel in the Russian Federal Security Administration (FSB). He said that Girkin had experienced many battlefields from Chechnya to Yugoslavia and since 2014 proclaimed himself the Defense Minister of the "People’s Republic of Donesk" set up by the separatists of eastern Ukraine.
Sergey Dubinsky and Oleg Pulatov are said to work under Igor Girkin in 2014 and served as a GRU agent, the Russian military intelligence agency is involved in the intervention in the 2016 US presidential election and the case. head of Russian Russian spy Sergei Skripal in the UK.
The fourth suspect, Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian citizen, is also connected to the leaders of the separatists. Kharchenko led a unit in the separatist army. Besides, Kharchenko can also join in coordinating the launch of missiles from Donetsk, the main city controlled by separatists in East Ukraine. Investigators have not found Kharchenko’s whereabouts, although they believe the suspect is probably in secession territory.
Russia’s role in Ukraine
The Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government has a strong relationship with Ukraine when it has a pro-Russian government in Kiev. But things began to change in a bad way when the protests led the President of Ukraine, Viktor F. Yanukovych, to Russia to live in February 2014. Emerging factions want the country to stay away from Moscow’s influence and turn to the West, possibly even joining the European Union and NATO.
Protests in Kiev, Ukraine in 2014 led the president of Ukraine, Viktor F. Yanukovych, to flee to Russia. (Source: New York Times)
A few days after Yanukovych was overthrown, Russian troops flocked to the Crimea, in eastern Ukraine. The Kremlin initially denied Russia’s entry into Ukraine, but later admitted and officially annexed Crimea to Russian territory.
President Vladimir Putin has said he has no regrets about the annexation of Crimea with Russia, saying it is an act of correcting history. The fighting in Eastern Ukraine began to erupt a few weeks later and continues to this day, directly threatening the prosperity and political stability of Ukraine.
The trial lacks defendants
Dutch prosecutor Fred Westerbeke said four suspects "will be held accountable for bringing weapons causing tragedy, the BUK Telar missile system, into eastern Ukraine".
According to JIT, the trial of four suspects will begin on March 9, 2020 in the Netherlands. However, suspects are likely to be tried in absentia because Russia does not allow the handover of citizens to foreign countries to be prosecuted and investigators have not known Kharchenko’s whereabouts.
From now until the trial takes place, JIT announced that it will continue to provide more clear evidence.
