On Thursday, a Dutch court will deliver its long-awaited ruling in the case of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down over eastern Ukraine in July 2014, killing all 298 people on board.
The flight – en route to Malaysian Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport – flew over Ukraine not long after the Russian president Vladimir Putin sent his troops to annex Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk.
Fighting between the two countries took place on the ground and in the air, leading to Ukraine closing airspace below 32,000 feet.
The Boeing 777 was flying at 33,000 feet and lost contact at 13:20 GMT. The Dutch Safety Board, US and German intelligence services concluded that the plane had been shot down by pro-Russian separatists. The Russian government has always denied any involvement.
Now, after eight long years, the Amsterdam trial will rule on whether three Russians and a Ukrainian are responsible for mass murder.
Those on trial — including Igor Girkin, who is a former FSB colonel on the day of the prosecution — all refused to appear in court and were tried in absentia. Whatever the outcome on Thursday, it is considered unlikely that any of the suspects will serve jail time, but the investigation has provided irrefutable evidence for the history books.
But a number of experts have already concluded that Russia was ultimately responsible for the MH17 attack. This includes Florence De Changy, who wrote the book, The Disappearing Act: The Impossible Case of MH370.
In fact, in the book, she suggests that Putin himself could be responsible by shooting down the plane to achieve two things: to “revenge” the US and to improve his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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She added: “I noticed that Xi and Putin became closer than ever during that period and they happened to be physically together in Brazil when MH17 was shot down. The day before, they talked about taking their relationship to a new ‘higher level’. level’ and Putin mentions ‘hitting the iron while it is hot’.
“I’ve talked about that too [theory] with people in that world [intelligence services] and to my great surprise, the more informed and highly placed they were, the less shocked they seemed at this hypothesis. In fact, someone told me that the more outrageous, the more likely it is to be true, in this type of operation.”
Similar claims were made by author Jeff Wise in his 2015 book The Plane That Wasn’t There. He argued that Russia could have shot down both MH17 and MH370 in 2014 to tell the West, “You can hurt us with sanctions, but don’t sleep too deeply at night.”
Ahead of this week’s verdict, another expert also placed responsibility for MH17 on Russia. Eliot Higgins, founder of the investigative journalism group Bellingcat, told the BBC that anyone denying Russia’s involvement is “ridiculous”.
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He said: “I think at this point, and especially with a guilty verdict, anyone who would argue that Russia was not involved in this shooting is really a ridiculous person”.
Mr Higgins also says the events of 2014 are linked to the invasion of Ukraine launched earlier this year. He argues that a tougher response to Putin could have stopped the war.
He continued: “People just turned a blind eye to it, policymakers just didn’t feel comfortable calling out Russia in a way they really should have. And they didn’t react in the way the 2022 invasion could have. to prevent. .
“I think there should have been more military support for Ukraine, more sanctions, more forceful response than we saw at the time. Preventive measures could have been taken that could have saved many lives.”
This view is also shared by the families of the victims. Silene Fredriksz, whose son and his girlfriend died on board flight MH17. She said the world needs to wake up to the threat of Putin.
She added: “Putin has never stopped and still hasn’t stopped. And he won’t stop until he is stopped. I hope the world wakes up now because we knew that eight years ago.”
The Disappearing Act: The Impossible Case of MH370 by Florence De Changy, published by Mudlark, is available here.