A Dutch court has convicted three men of murder in a 2014 shooting down of a passenger plane over eastern Ukraine that killed 298 people, according to FMT.
A court found that a Russian-made missile launched by a Russian-controlled armed group and supplied by Russia shot down MH17.
Three of his men, two Russians and one Ukrainian, were convicted in absentia. A third Russian was acquitted.
Rocket attacks were one of Ukraine's most notorious war crimes before the allegations of atrocities committed there became the routine reality.
Many of the victims' surviving families believe that if the world had acted differently and stood up to Russia, the invasion of Ukraine eight years ago and the geopolitical turmoil that followed could have been avoided.
Despite the fact that the three prisoners intended to shoot down a military aircraft, not a civilian one, a judge ruled it was a deliberate attempt to shoot down a jet.
The so-called military commander of the Donetsk People's Republic, Igor Gurkin, was found guilty of launching missiles and asking Russia for help. It turns out that Leonid Kharchenko supervised and guarded the Buk rocket launcher, while Sergey Dubinsky arranged and directed its transport.
Of the four defendants, only Oleg Platov had a lawyer at his trial. A judge concluded that he knew of the missile but was not involved in the crime.
Among 298 passengers on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 to Kuala Lumpur at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on July 17, 2014, were 80 children and 15 crew members.
The plane flew 33,000 feet over Ukraine. It was in the early days of Russia trying to annex parts of the country.
This was a relatively low-intensity conflict area at the time, although recent dogfights intensified the fighting. Several military aircraft have been shot down in the last few months.
In retaliation, Ukraine closed its airspace to 32,000 feet below ground. However, flights continued to spread across the country.
Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777s flew 300 metres above this restricted airspace. They lost contact with air traffic control at 1 PM Greenwich Mean Time.
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