Putin “delivered a Buk missile” that hit flight MH17 over Ukraine, killing all 298 on board, investigators say

There are “strong indications” that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself agreed to supply the missile that shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014, international investigators said on Wednesday.

The BUK-TELAR missile system was used to down the passenger plane en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, according to the six-nation joint investigation team investigating the crash.

All 298 passengers and crew were killed when the missile hit the plane and knocked it back to earth. Russia has denied any involvement.

“There is strong evidence that the Russian president decided to deliver the Buk-TELAR to the DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic) separatists,” the researchers said in a statement.

Despite this, prosecutors today said they are suspending the criminal investigation into the incident, claiming they do not have enough evidence to bring new charges.

FILE PHOTO: Local workers transport wreckage from Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 to the plane crash site near the town of Hrabove (Grabovo) in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region on November 20, 2014

Russian President Vladimir Putin leads a meeting with members of the Security Council via video link at the state residence Novo-Ogaryovo outside Moscow, Russia, February 3, 2023

The Buk rocket is launched in an animated replica by the Dutch researchers

The Dutch prosecutor Digna van Boetzelaer said that “the investigation has now reached its limits. All leads were exhausted” as the team began to gather the evidence they discovered during their lengthy investigation.

The announcement came nearly three months after a Dutch court convicted two Russians and a Ukrainian rebel for their role in the July 17, 2014 shooting down of the Boeing 777.

A Russian was acquitted by the court.

None of the suspects appeared in court and it was unclear whether the three, who were convicted of multiple murders, would ever serve their sentences.

One of the men convicted, Igor “Strelkov” Girkin, a former security official who served as one of the chief architects of Putin’s annexation of Crimea, is now an outspoken advocate and military strategist amid the war in the Ukraine.

The convictions and the court’s ruling that the Buk surface-to-air missile that blew up the Amsterdam-Kuala Lumpur flight came from a Russian military base were taken as clear evidence that Moscow was involved in the tragedy .

The Russian Foreign Ministry accused the court in November of giving in to pressure from Dutch politicians, prosecutors and the news media during the war in Ukraine.

But according to the November convictions, in 2014 Moscow had full control over the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, the separatist region in eastern Ukraine where the missile was fired.

The Buk missile system came from the Russian army’s 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade, based in the city of Kursk.

Lawyers participate in the judicial inspection of the reconstruction of the wreckage of the MH17 as part of the murder trial before a critical phase begins in May 2021 in Reijen, Netherlands

Two former Russian intelligence officers – Igor Girkin (top left) and Sergey Dubinskiy (top right) – as well as Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko (bottom right), who worked for Putin, were found guilty of murdering the 289 people on board the Boeing 777 . A third former Russian intelligence officer, Oleg Pulatov (bottom left), was acquitted by a Dutch court

The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) consists of experts from the Netherlands, Australia, Malaysia, Belgium and Ukraine, although Dutch prosecutors are taking the lead as most of the victims are Dutch.

The victims of the disaster came from 10 countries, including 196 Dutch, 43 Malaysians and 38 Australians.

The JIT continued investigations into the crew of Russia’s Buk missile system that shot down the plane and those who ordered its deployment to Ukraine.

The evidence of close ties between the leadership of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Russian government officials raises questions about their involvement in the missile deployment, Dutch prosecutors reported on their website.

It cites wiretapped phone conversations between leaders of the breakaway region and “senior Russian government officials who were detained in the summer of 2014.”

In addition to the criminal case in the Netherlands, the Dutch and Ukrainian governments are taking Russia to the European Court of Human Rights for its alleged role in the downing of MH17.