International investigators have again concluded that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down on July 17, 2014 while flying over eastern Ukraine, was hit by a Russian missile.
The airplane crash killed 298 people including 283 passengers and immediately prompted international outcry. Although Russia has repeatedly denied any involvement in the crash, the Dutch Safety Board concluded in 2015 that it had been downed by a Buk missile brought in from Russia on the previous day, according to the BBC. One year later, the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) claimed that it had "irrefutable evidence" that the missile had been fired from a field controlled by pro-Russia fighters after being brought in from Russian territory. The team that issued this report included members from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine.
On Thursday, JIT doubled down on its assertion, declaring that the missile had originated from a western Russian unit and fired from Ukrainian territory held by pro-Russia rebels. One Dutch official from JIT, Wilbert Paulissen, told reporters that "all the vehicles in a convoy carrying the missile were part of the Russian armed forces." He specified that the missile had come from Russia's 53rd anti-aircraft brigade in Kursk.
Russia's defense ministry responded by repeating what they have said since 2014: they had nothing to do with it.
"Not a single anti-aircraft missile system from the Russian Federation has ever crossed the Russia-Ukraine border," proclaimed the defense ministry in Moscow.
JIT's announcement was offered two days after some family members of those killed on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 published an open letter in the Russian news site Novaya Gazeta, according to NPR. In that letter, they made it clear that while they do not blame the Russian people, they do blame the Russian state.
Like all who have suffered the violent death of people we love, we are tempted to respond with hate. But we have to separate ordinary Russian people from the individuals responsible - the chain of command that led to the shooting down of MH17. Most of us don’t know Russian people well. Hate and distrust come partly from ignorance and when we know more of a person’s story, that can change how we see things. We know that the Russian people have a right to thrive, as did our loved ones. Still, we struggle. If we are able to change it will take time. But we know that giving in to hatred and bitterness would consume us and, unchecked among the nations, it will destroy human life on this planet.
It is easier when we remember we are all human beings and what we have in common. Some of us saw the faces of Russian families after Metrojet Flight 9268 was bombed and crashed over Egypt in October 2015, killing all 224 people on board. They were overwhelmed with grief, struggling to comprehend what had happened. We understand that disbelief, the horror of your loved one’s lives being taken violently and without warning. If ever we met those families perhaps we could start a conversation, for we would already know a central truth about each other’s lives.
No, we do not blame the Russian people for what happened. We are not against you. We hold the Russian state and its leaders as ultimately responsible for the deaths of our family members. All the credible evidence points in that direction. It has already been a long wait for us, but sometime in the future the five nation Joint Investigation Team will deliver its final report and people will be named. Then it will be up to the appointed court in the Netherlands to carefully weigh the evidence and reach a conclusion about which individuals were responsible.
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