Netherlands commemorates 10th anniversary of MH17 crash

Ten years after the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in Ukraine, the Netherlands held a solemn memorial ceremony to remember the 298 victims who died.

The ceremony was attended by relatives of the victims and representatives from Malaysia, Australia, Britain, Belgium and Ukraine.

During the ceremony at the MH17 memorial site in the village of Vijfhuizen near Amsterdam, relatives of the deceased read out the names of all the victims.

On July 17, 2014, flight MH17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) was shot down by a missile in the sky over Eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

Ukrainian authorities and some Western countries believe that Russia and independence forces in eastern Ukraine were behind the incident, but Moscow and the above forces firmly denied it, asserting that the plane was hit by a missile fired from an area controlled by the Ukrainian government army.

In November 2022, a Dutch court sentenced three men (two Russians and one Ukrainian) to life in prison for their roles in the incident. Another Russian defendant was acquitted. All were convicted in absentia.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has dismissed the ruling as "politically motivated", saying Dutch prosecutors had ignored all evidence that the missile could have been launched by Ukrainian soldiers from territory controlled by Ukrainian government troops.

In February 2023, international investigators announced the end of their investigation into the 2014 crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in Ukraine without initiating any new proceedings.