This week marks 10 years since Russian-backed separatists shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. The downing – caused by missiles that were likely personally approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin – followed Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the Donbas in March 2014.
Russia has strenuously denied any involvement in the downing of MH17 and has actively peddled disinformation to muddy the waters in holding perpetrators to account. For years, Russia’s simple strategy of denial and willful deceit worked. In 2015, Russia used its U.N. Security Council veto power to block the establishment of an international tribunal to investigate the incident.
Immediately following the downing, overwhelming open-source evidence surfaced clearly indicating that Russian-backed separatists shot down the aircraft with a Russian-supplied missile over territory controlled by Russian proxies. In 2016, a MH17 Joint Investigation Team consisting of experts from Ukraine, Netherlands, Australia, Malaysia, and Belgium finally delivered its first results, which were broadly consistent with the open-source findings that pointed to Russia’s culpability.
However, it was not until 2019 that Dutch prosecutors announced they would charge four suspects, three Russians and one Russian-backed separatist, for the downing of MH17. And in November 2022, the Dutch courts finally sentenced three of them to life imprisonment in absentia.
Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, no other personal or economic sanctions were imposed on Putin, his inner circle, or the Russian economy for murdering 298 people in an international act of terrorism. Until Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine received little to no aid from the West to protect its sovereignty. The authoritarian regime was determined to extinguish Ukrainian freedom by any means necessary, including by shooting down a civilian airliner full of foreign nationals.
While MH17 victims and their families are still awaiting genuine justice, Ukrainians are still fighting for their freedom and survival on the frontlines. The weakness of the Western response to MH17, which emboldened Putin and foreshadowed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, regrettably continues to this day.
The U.S. State Department, which stated this week that it is “committed to holding Russia accountable for war crimes,” should finally designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. The U.S. Congress should continue to provide Ukraine with all the military and financial tools it needs to protect its sovereignty and its freedom, a vital U.S. national security interest. Finally, the West must urgently expedite Ukraine’s membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, so that Russia can never again repeat MH17 and other atrocities on Ukrainian land.
