Ukraine’s foreign minister: MH17 court decisions "send a message to Russia"

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, has welcomed today’s verdicts of the Hague District Court relating to the downing of flight MH17, which was shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile when it was flying over Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, in July 2014. Kuleba said that he hopes the entire Russian chain of command will be held responsible in the future.

Source: Dmytro Kuleba on Twitter; European Pravda

Quote from Kuleba: "I welcome the first MH17 verdicts. Profound joint effort by Ukraine, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, and Malaysia. Today’s verdicts send a message to Russia: no amount of lies can help escape justice. All criminals up the Russian chain of command shall be held accountable."

Previously: The Hague District Court, which is hearing case of the downed passenger plane, found Igor Girkin, an organiser of militant groups in the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), and Sergey Dubinskiy and Leonid Kharchenko, his subordinates, guilty of shooting down the aircraft. All three defendants were sentenced in absentia to life in prison. The court ordered them arrested. They were also ordered to pay "more than €16m" in compensation to the victims.

The fourth defendant, Oleg Pulatov, was acquitted of the charges owing to lack of evidence of his role in firing the missile, despite the fact that he was Girkin’s deputy and had ordered the other defendants to evacuate the Buk missile system, which was used to fire the missile that shot down the plane.

The court in The Hague also recognised that Russia was controlling the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic when flight MH17 was brought down.

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