July 17, 2014

MH17

On July 17, 2014, a Boeing 777 of Malaysia Airlines, which operates a regular flight MH17, is shot down near the city of Torez, Donetsk region.

All passengers and crew (298 people) die. This disaster has one of the largest amounts of casualties in history.

Regular flight MH17 from Amsterdam (Netherlands) to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) departs on July 17, 2014 at 13:30 Kyiv time. According to the black boxes, there are no malfunctions on the plane and the flight goes normally, however, at about 4 p.m. communication with the liner is lost.

Shortly afterwards, messages, videos and photos appeared on social media showing the remains of a plane that crashed near Torez. At about 5:50 p.m., one of the leaders of the militants in Donbass, Igor Strelkov, less than two hours after the crash posts on social media that the separatists shot down the AN-26 in the area of Torez. When it becomes clear that a passenger plane is shot down, not a military one, Strelkov deletes his post.

On the same day, the Security Service recorded telephone conversations between the militants, which allegedly involvs the downing of a passenger liner, which gives grounds to put forward a version according to which the plane was shot down by a Russian anti-aircraft missile system “Buk.” According to prosecutor Manon Ridderbecks’ report on December 20, 2021, the MH17 crash is one of the most serious crimes resulting from an operation involving the participants in the case of Igor Girkin, Serhiy Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov, and Leonid Kharchenko.