On March 9 the trial of the MH-17 flight starts in the Netherlands. The aircraft was shot down by a SA-11 Gadfly missile over Donbass in July 2014 from the territory controlled by pro-Russian forces. As a result of the hit 298 people were killed. The investigations and analysis of phone interceptions, at that time initiated by OSINT, pointed to Russia as the organizer of this tragedy, in which SA-11 Gadfly and its crew violated the Ukrainian border and fired on a civilian aircraft. But without the legal component these charges would have carried little weight. The case investigation has been conducted. Concrete accused ones have been announced, it was expected that three of them belong to Russian military personnel, and one Ukrainian citizen who was involved in the structures of proxy forces under Kremlin’s control. Naturally that despite the importance of the case for the world, the main attention to it is concentrated in Ukraine, and it means a lot not only for the state structures, but also for the public and expert community. And that is why on March 5 a round-table “The MH-17 Case. Aggravating Circumstances of the Kremlin ‒ 2” (the first round-table with the same name was held by the same organizers on November 1 last year) took place in Kyiv. The round-table was attended by international lawyers, experts, political scientists and politicians. The officials of several embassies and agencies of international organizations were the observers of the event. An Estonian expert took part in the discussion via Skype. They discussed the prospects of bringing not only the direct perpetrators of the crime to justice, but also the leadership of the Russian Federation, analyzed trends in the Kremlin’s strategy and tactics of defense, and blurring the case. Ukraine’s tactics of increasing attention to the problem in the world has become a separate topic.
Summarizing the results of the round-table, it should be mentioned that as the trial progresses, Moscow will only expand the information campaign designed to distract the world from the accusation against the Kremlin, to blur the main version of the investigation and to form an image of Ukraine as the culprit of this tragedy. As the pure information campaign does not work, the arsenal of pressure on politicians who publicly claim political leadership of Russian Federation to be guilty is expanding, up to a ban on delegations to Russia and personal sanctions, as it happened late February with the member of the Dutch parliament Suardsma and a delegation of the legislative body of this country. At the same time, the Netherlands and Malaysia, as the countries that have lost the most citizens and are most interested in the process, remain the main areas of the Kremlin’s efforts. In the Netherlands the Kremlin uses mechanisms provided by democracy ‒ political and activist structures, journalists who have previously been involved in anti-Ukrainian campaigns, as it was in 2016, when the “Committee on Global Rights of Peaceful People” prevented the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU to be signed, conducted aggressive and manipulative campaign at a referendum on the issue. In Malaysia the Kremlin influences politicians. The former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamat in a joint statement with an investigative team did not tell about Russia’s innocence, but his passage that “a qualified military man in SA-11 Gadfly is able to identify a civilian plane” (said, by the way, after Iran recognized the fact that at the beginning of the year Ukrainian Boeing was shot down by Iranian professional anti-aircraft gunners) works on one of a swarm of versions launched by the Kremlin ‒ about “the rebels fighting against the Kyiv regime in a civil war”. Even so, the question of the origin of SA-11 Gadfly sounds like an accusation of Russia.
Lawyers and the deputy of the 8th convocation Hannah Gopko, who participated in the round-table, spoke about the possibility and necessity to qualify the case of MH-17 as a terrorist act, as well as the need to consider the case in the context of all lawsuits of Ukraine against Russia. And in this regard “Lockerbie case” becomes an important precedent. After the terrorist act, organized by the Libyan intelligence services in 1988, sanctions were imposed on Libya. Partially sanctions achieved the goal after eleven years, when Libya was forced to extradite its perpetrators, and in 2003 ‒ to plead guilty of the state. The sanctions and the attitude of the world weakened the country and made it almost an outcast with dire consequences for the regime. Now it is also possible to organize a tribunal without the consent of the UNO, engaging the countries whose citizens have died. Political analyst Oleg Lisny, one of the organizers of the round-table, believes that in this way the MH-17 case could be a way for Putin to collapse, as it happened with Libya’s dictator Gaddafi.
Moscow is trying to absolve itself of political responsibility and may condemn the immediate perpetrators and organizers like Ghirkin. However, this is fundamentally wrong from a legal and humanist point of view. The main narrative of Ukraine should be that Russia is a terrorist state anOn March 9 the trial of the MH-17 flight starts in the Netherlands. The aircraft was shot down by a SA-11 Gadfly missile over Donbass in July 2014 from the territory controlled by pro-Russian forces. As a result of the hit 298 people were killed. The investigations and analysis of phone interceptions, at that time initiated by OSINT, pointed to Russia as the organizer of this tragedy, in which SA-11 Gadfly and its crew violated the Ukrainian border and fired on a civilian aircraft. But without the legal component these charges would have carried little weight. The case investigation has been conducted. Concrete accused ones have been announced, it was expected that three of them belong to Russian military personnel, and one Ukrainian citizen who was involved in the structures of proxy forces under Kremlin’s control. Naturally that despite the importance of the case for the world, the main attention to it is concentrated in Ukraine, and it means a lot not only for the state structures, but also for the public and expert community. And that is why on March 5 a round-table “The MH-17 Case. Aggravating Circumstances of the Kremlin ‒ 2” (the first round-table with the same name was held by the same organizers on November 1 last year) took place in Kyiv. The round-table was attended by international lawyers, experts, political scientists and politicians. The officials of several embassies and agencies of international organizations were the observers of the event. An Estonian expert took part in the discussion via Skype. They discussed the prospects of bringing not only the direct perpetrators of the crime to justice, but also the leadership of the Russian Federation, analyzed trends in the Kremlin’s strategy and tactics of defense, and blurring the case. Ukraine’s tactics of increasing attention to the problem in the world has become a separate topic.d in this direction it is necessary to form a pool of friends of Ukraine who agree with such an assessment. In addition, the discussion of the MH-17 case should and will be moved abroad, primarily to Europe, where it is necessary to show the West that even Iranian regime has managed to admit its guilt for the death of Ukrainian passenger plane. At the same time the Kremlin regime, terrorist by nature, is tolerated by many European leaders who, as Macron, are ready to stand on the rostrum of the mausoleum in Moscow on May 9 together with a man who sanctioned the use of the methods that betray the principles of democracy and human rights.
The round-table “The MH-17 Сase. Aggravating Circumstances of the Kremlin — 2”, was organized by Ukrainian “Charitable Foundation “Accent” and public organization “Amber Way”.
