25 November 2024
A decade since the passenger flight MH17 was shot down, the guilty - convicted in absentia - remain protected in Russia.
This Al Jazeera report investigates the last 10 years of evidence and Putin's direct involvement in the incident. Since 2014, investigators operating out of the Netherlands have been gathering evidence to claim justice for the victims and their families. Elliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat - an Amsterdam based research group that does open-source investigation - states: "we were able to show definitively that the missile launcher came from Russia...and the exact route that was taken on the day." Digna Van Boetzaeler, chief prosecutor on the case, shows how social media implies the hit was a mistake originally celebrated by Russian troops who were convinced they'd hit a Ukrainian warplane;
"After the plane was shot down, 65,000 tweets were sent out from the troll factory in St Petersburg saying #Ukraine , Kyiv and I." Since then, Russian media have changed their tune - claiming that MH17 was shot down by a Ukrainian military jet. Higgins raises an interesting point: "Perhaps if the world had reacted to MH17 at the time, there wouldn't have been such a permission structure for Putin to invade Ukraine in 2022."
