STRASBOURG (France), June 12 European Court of Rights human rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg began hearings on the merits of the claim of the Netherlands and Ukraine against the Russian Federation for the crash of flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine in 2014, the Russian delegation is not present in court, a correspondent reports from the courtroom.
The ECHR on Wednesday began examining the merits of the claim of the Netherlands and Ukraine against Russia. The lawsuit concerns events in eastern Ukraine since 2014, including the crash of Malaysian Boeing flight MH17.
The hearing is attended by a panel of the court headed by its chairman Siofra O'leary, delegations from the Netherlands and Ukraine, as well as representatives of third parties, including ECHR member countries — Great Britain, Belgium, Austria, Germany, France, Denmark, Finland and others.
The Russian delegation is not present at the meeting in Strasbourg. The court was told that the defendant State had not provided information about who would represent it in court.
The ECHR on January 26, 2022 began considering the joint complaint of the Netherlands and Ukraine against Russia regarding the MH17 case in Donbass in 2014, as well as regarding the events in eastern Ukraine.
On January 25, 2023, the court in Strasbourg recognized the joint claim of the Netherlands and Ukraine against Russia as partially admissible. This meant that the court would then proceed to consider this claim on its merits. At the same time, the court recognized individual complaints from Ukraine against the Russian Federation regarding the removal of children from eastern Ukraine in 2014 as unacceptable.
Ukraine previously filed several claims with the ECHR against the Russian Federation, they relate to Crimea and Donbass. In July 2020, the Strasbourg court officially notified Russia of the complaint filed by the Netherlands against it regarding the crash of the Malaysian Boeing. The Russian Foreign Ministry assessed the filing of the complaint as another blow to Russian-Dutch relations. Subsequently, all these complaints were combined.
In the summer of 2023, the ECHR rejected the Russian Federation’s complaint against Ukraine, including regarding the crash of flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine, explaining this by the fact that Moscow allegedly did not respond to numerous requests from the court. The complaint filed by Russia with the ECHR alleged that Ukraine was responsible for the deaths of passengers on flight MH17, which crashed on July 17, 2014, because the country did not close its airspace. The lawsuit also alleged human rights violations in Ukraine since 2014, including murders, kidnappings, forced displacement, voting interference, restrictions on the use of the Russian language, and attacks on Russian embassies and consulates.
A Malaysian Boeing flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on flight MH17 crashed on July 17, 2014 near Donetsk. There were 298 people on board, all of them died. Kyiv immediately blamed the DPR militia for the plane crash, but they said that they did not have the means to shoot down the plane at such an altitude.
In November 2022, the trial in the case of the crash of flight MH17 ended in the Netherlands after two and a half years. The District Court of The Hague on November 17, 2022 found Russians Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko guilty of shooting down flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and killing 298 of its passengers and sentenced them in absentia to life imprisonment. At the same time, the court found the fourth accused Russian, Oleg Pulatov, not guilty and rejected the prosecutor’s request to place him in prison. Pulatov was released from liability for compensation claims. The rest, as the Dutch court decided, will have to pay a total of 16 million euros to the families of the victims. The court did not directly link the use of the Buk air defense system against flight MH17 to Russia during the sentencing, although it expressed the opinion that Russia had control over the DPR at that time. The court also ruled that flight MH17 was shot down by a Buk air defense system launched from Pervomaisky, which was then controlled by the DPR militia.
The Russian Foreign Ministry, commenting on the court decision in the Netherlands, stated that the court selectively accepted materials on the MH17 case and disregarded the principles of impartial justice; the course and results of the proceedings show that it was based on a political order to reinforce the version of Russian involvement.
Ukraine refused to provide data from its radars, and the United States did not transfer satellite images to the investigation, which, as they claim, show the moment of the missile launch.
As stated by Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia Nikolai Vinnichenko, the Russian side transferred to the Netherlands not only Russian radar data, but also documentation indicating that the Buk air defense missile that hit Boeing belonged to Ukraine, and it was launched from territory controlled by Kyiv, but investigators did not provide this information. ignored.
At the same time, on the first day of the court hearing, the prosecution admitted that it had received and was studying data from the Russian prosecutor's office. The investigation was carried out by a joint investigation team (JIT) under the leadership of the Dutch Prosecutor General's Office without the participation of Russia. The investigation claims that the Boeing was shot down from the Buk anti-aircraft missile system, which belonged to the 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade of the Russian Armed Forces from Kursk, from territory controlled by the militia.
The state prosecution line was based on the testimony of exclusively anonymous witnesses. The defense of the Russian accused in the case, Pulatov, said that this made it difficult to assess the reliability of their testimony, but the Dutch prosecutor's office insisted that anonymity was necessary for security reasons.
The Russian Foreign Ministry stated from the very beginning that accusations of Russian involvement in the Boeing crash are unfounded and regrettable, and the investigation is biased and one-sided. According to the head of the department, Sergei Lavrov, it is full of double standards