Good morning,
Lots of people tweeting about Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was shot down over eastern Ukraine three years ago today:
We are now closing the live blog for today, but we'll be back again tomorrow morning to follow all the latest developments. Until then, you can keep up with all our other Ukraine coverage here.
Investigators say it's clear what caused Flight MH17 to crash in eastern Ukraine's war zone in 2014: a Buk missile brought in from Russia and fired from territory held by Moscow-backed separatists. But they have yet to name a single suspect, and families of the 298 victims can only sit and wait for justice. RFE/RL'S Alan Crosby reports:
Three Years On, Families of MH17 Victims Still Seeking Justice
Evert van Zijtveld doesn't want to talk about the 2014 plane crash in eastern Ukraine that took the lives of his two teenage children. He wants justice.
But three years after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, the bereaved Dutch father -- who also lost his in-laws in the crash -- is still waiting. As are the loved ones of all 298 passengers and crew killed when the Boeing 777 was shot down during what should have been a routine trip from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
"Whoever did it should be brought to justice. That's the only story I can share with anyone," van Zijtveld told RFE/RL by telephone on July 13, four days before the third anniversary of the disaster.
MH17 took off from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport at 12:31 p.m. local time and headed east along its approved flight path. After flying over Germany and Poland, the plane, as planned, vectored slightly south into Ukrainian airspace.
Air traffic controllers lost contact with the aircraft a little under two hours after takeoff, as it entered the airspace above territory controlled by Russia-backed separatists near the Russian frontier.
Soon afterwards, there were reports of a missing plane. These were followed by footage of a crash site and witnesses speaking of dozens of bodies on the ground.
All 283 passengers -- including van Zijtveld's 19-year-old daughter Frederique and 18-year-old son Robert-Jan, who were on their way to Bali for a three-week holiday with their grandparents -- were dead. None of the 15 crew members survived, either.
Of the victims, 189 were Dutch nationals, 44, including the crew, were Malaysian, 27 were Australian while there were also 12 Indonesians, 10 Britons, four Germans, four Belgians, three Filipinos, and one each from Canada, the United States, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Ireland. Some of the passengers on the plane were also dual citizens.
Confusion, Misinformation
As questions about what happened began to arise, so too did confusion, misinformation and accusations over why MH17 plummeted from the sky.
A post on the Russian social media site VKontakte attributed to Igor Girkin, a Russian who was a commander of separatist militants at the time, claimed responsibility. The same day, the separatists denied involvement and the post was taken down.
Communications intercepts made public later in July 2014 appeared to show separatists discussing an aircraft that they had downed and only afterward realized was a civilian jet -- not a warplane.
As the controversy swirled, grieving relatives became increasingly distressed and angry at a lack of answers to their questions about the crash.
In October 2015, the Dutch Safety Board concluded the plane was brought down by a Russian-made rocket and outlined the area from which it was fired, which was largely held by the separatists.
That was followed by a report by Bellingcat, a team of independent, open-source researchers, who said it had positively identified the actual Russian Buk missile launcher as the weapon that brought the passenger jet's flight to a fiery end.
And in September 2016, the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) that conducted the international investigation said it had determined that the Buk missile system had been brought into Ukraine from Russia shortly before MH17 was shot down and then quickly smuggled back to Russia afterward. It said the missile was fired from a field in separatist-held territory.
Read the entire article here
From near the Russian Embassy in The Hague, it seems: