The international Joint Investigation Team has officially found Russia responsible for the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.
At a press conference on May 24, the team stated that the Buk surface-to-air missile that downed the Boeing 777 plane on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 passengers on board, did belong to Russian armed forces.
In the course of their investigation, the team successfully tracked the weapon’s path from a Russian military unit to the occupied territory of Ukraine’s Donbas region.
After scrutinizing multiple distinctive features of the missile — particularly the Buk’s tail number, which was partially visible in photos and video footage — the investigation identified both the missile system and the truck that carried it as belonging to Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Brigade, which is based in the city of Kursk.
“All the vehicles in a convoy carrying the missile were part of the Russian armed forces,” said Wilbert Paulissen, a Dutch National Police representative.
All data extracted from the photos and video footage corresponds to eyewitness reports on the case, the group said. Additionally, Australian police official Jennifer Hurst added that flight MH17 was downed with a 9M38 Buk missile produced in 1986 by a factory outside Moscow.
According to Hurst, the investigators were able to establish the missile’s origin and specification after its debris — particularly the engine capsule bearing its serial number — was discovered on Ukrainian-controlled territory near the front line in September 2016
In its previous report from September 2016, the JIT — which consists of investigators from the Netherlands, Belgium, Malaysia, Australia, and Ukraine — confirmed that the Boeing was downed by a Russian-made missile.
A number of journalistic investigations, most notably by the Bellingcat open-source investigation group, had previously concluded that the Buk missile system belonged to Russia’s 53rd Brigade and that Russian military servicemen deployed to support militant forces in Donbas were directly responsible for the fatal shot.
In February 2017, Belligcat also identified a retired Russian officer, Sergei Dubinskiy, to be directly responsible for transporting the Buk missile unit from the military base in Kursk to the occupied Donbas and back again in July 2014.
Russia has consistently denied its involvement in the catastrophe, despite extensive evidence.
Speaking to BBC News on May 24, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeatedly rejected the JIT investigation’s results.
“We cannot accept as final truth of what they say,” he said. “I bet you haven’t seen any proof.”
Following the JIT press conference, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said there is reason to hope that the Dutch prosecution will file indictments against those involved in downing MH17 in the near future.
According to Poroshenko, Ukraine will do “everything possible to ensure that Russia’s activities as a state sponsor of terrorism receive an appropriate reprisal at the United Nations International Court of Justice.”
“The evil will be punished, and justice will be restored,” he said.
