MH17 shot down over Ukraine

On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, broke apart in the air over the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists were fighting Ukrainian forces. All 298 people aboard were killed, 196 of them Dutch. Wreckage and bodies fell across fields controlled by the separatists, who hampered access for days. The Dutch Safety Board concluded in 2015 that a 9M38 missile fired from a Buk surface-to-air system had exploded just outside the cockpit.¹

A Joint Investigation Team led by the Netherlands found in 2018 that the Buk launcher belonged to Russia's 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, had been driven into Ukraine from Russia, and was taken back afterward. In November 2022 a Dutch court convicted two Russians and a Ukrainian separatist of murder in absentia and acquitted a fourth man. Investigators said in 2023 there were strong indications Putin had approved sending the weapon, though they lacked evidence to charge him. In 2025 the UN's civil aviation council and the European Court of Human Rights both held Russia responsible. Russia denies involvement and has offered alternative accounts that investigators rejected.²³⁴