Progress in Seeking Justice for MH17 Victims and their Families

That the Parliament marks with sadness the fifth anniversary of the unprovoked shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 by what it believes was a Russian army-owned Buk surface-to-air missile from a farm near Pervomaisk, an area that was under control of pro-Russian forces, while travelling above Kursk from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on 17 July 2014, resulting in 298 deaths, including 15 crew members and 80 children; welcomes the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team’s (JIT) announcement on 19 June 2019 that there is now enough evidence to bring murder charges against four suspects, who are accused of being responsible for bringing the anti-aircraft system to eastern Ukraine, with a trial due to commence on 9 March 2020 in the Netherlands; notes that the suspects were named as Igor Girkin, who is a former colonel of Russian security service, the FSB, and was the minister of defence and commander of the Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic at the time, Sergey Dubinskiy, who is employed by Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, Oleg Pulatov, who is a former soldier with the GRU’s special forces unit, and Leonid Kharchenko, who is a Ukrainian alleged to have been the commander of a military combat unit in Donetsk; understands that the JIT is continuing to work tirelessly to bring to justice all those who have been involved with, or who can in any way be held responsible for, the 298 deaths of innocent civilians; urges the Russian Federation once again to accept responsibility for what it considers a heinous act of terrorism and to help secure justice for the victims and their families, and expresses Scotland’s continuing sympathy to everyone whose lives have been impacted by this senseless act of mass murder.