MH17 flight was shot down by Russian-made missile

A Dutch court has found that a Russian-made Buk missile was used to bring down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing all 298 people onboard.

The court convicted two Russians and one Ukrainian separatist of murder for their roles in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

Russian nationals Igor Girkin, a former colonel of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), and Sergey Dubinskiy, who was employed by Russia’s military intelligence agency GRU, were convicted along with Ukrainian separatist Leonid Kharchenko, who had no military background but is believed to have led a combat unit in Donetsk in July 2014.

A fourth suspect, Russian national Oleg Pulatov, a former soldier of the Russian special forces Spetsnaz-GRU, was acquitted.

The plane was flying over a region at the epicenter of fighting between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces -- the precursor to the current war.

MH17 was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014, when it was shot out of the sky over territory held by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.

All 298 people on board were killed in the incident, including 15 crew members and 283 passengers from 17 countries. The downing of the jet happened in the early phase of a conflict between pro-Russia separatists and Ukrainian forces.

The Dutch court’s verdict comes nearly nine months after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and weeks after Moscow sought to illegally annex four Ukrainian regions, including the area where prosecutors say the missile that brought down MH17 was fired from eight years earlier.