FLIGHT MH17 ‘MURDERERS’ UNMASKED
Ex-Russian spy among four charged over death of 298 in downed airliner
‘Putin created this situation’
A FORMER colonel in Russia’s security service was sensationally accused of murder yesterday over the downing of a jet carrying nearly 300 passengers.
International investigators accused Igor Girkin and three others of co- ordinating the destruction of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in 2014.
The Boeing 777 was obliterated over Ukraine by a Russian-built surface-toair missile. All 298 passengers and crew were killed. The four suspects – the first to be named by the inquiry – are likely to be tried in their absence next year.
Moscow dismissed the inquiry’s findings as ‘absolutely unfounded’.
Officials in the Netherlands said they had issued international arrest warrants for former FSB officer Girkin and fellow Russians Sergei Dubinsky and Oleg Pulatov. A Ukrainian citizen, Leonid Kharchenko, was the fourth man to be charged with murder.
All have military or intelligence backgrounds and are thought to have been operating in Ukraine’s separatist Donetsk region, which was highly unstable in July 2014. Months earlier, Russian president Vladimir Putin had ordered his military to seize the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.
Dutch prosecutor Fred Westerbeke said the suspects ‘will be held accountable for bringing the deadly weapon, the BUK Telar, into eastern Ukraine’. He added: ‘ We won’t demand their extradition because Russian and Ukrainian law forbids extradition of their nationals. But we ask Russia once more to cooperate. Many of our questions remain unanswered.’
Prosecutors said that all four were suspected of ‘close cooperation to obtain and deploy’ the missile and could therefore be held jointly responsible.
Silene Fredriksz, whose son and daughter-in-law died on MH17, said: ‘It’s a start. I’m satisfied. I am happy that the trial is finally going to start and the names have been announced.’ Mrs Fredriksz said ultimate responsibility lay with Mr Putin ‘because he made this possible, he created this situation’.
Piet Ploeg, who lost three family members, said: ‘The relatives of the victims have been waiting for this for nearly five years.’ Of the passengers who died, 196 were Dutch and 38 Australian.
Girkin, 48, led Russian and separatist forces in the Donetsk region in 2014 before apparently falling out with the Kremlin. He wrote on his social media account at the time of MH17’s destruction that the rebels had shot down a Ukrainian military plane in the area where the Malaysian aircraft went down. He later deleted the post.
Now thought to be living in Moscow, he said yesterday: ‘I can only say that rebels did not shoot down the Boeing.’
Dubinsky, 56, who was formerly in the military intelligence agency GRU, was head of the intelligence service of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Pulatov, 52, an ex-soldier in the GRU’s spetsnaz special forces unit, was one of his deputies. Kharchenko was a military commander in Donetsk.
Investigators yesterday played telephone intercepts they said showed the four’s guilt.
A Russian foreign ministry spokesman said: ‘ Once again, absolutely unfounded accusations are being made... aimed at discrediting Russia.’