Flight MH17 was shot down by a Russian missile fired from the city of Pervomaisk, in the Lugansk district, which at the time was under the control of pro-Russian separatist militants, which Moscow recently annexed to its territory through a referendum. It is part of the verdict handed down today by Judge Hendrik Steenhuis in a Dutch court in The Hague.

"Fragments of the Buk missile found in the bodies of the victims are irrefutable proof that it was this missile that caused the flight to be shot down", the judge explained. "The court finds that flight MH17 was shot down incontrovertibly by a rocket fire from a field near Pervomaisk, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew".

The B-777/200ER of Malaysian Airlines, which took off from Amsterdam and was bound for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (flight MH17) was shot down on 17 July 2014 by a Buk surface-to-air missile: 298 people lost their lives in the tragedy.

The prosecution has asked for life sentences for the four defendants: Russians Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov and Ukrainian separatist Leonid Kharchenko. None of them were in the courtroom today and they never took part in the hearings. The international investigation into the tragedy had established that the aircraft had been shot down by a missile supplied by Moscow and launched from an area then controlled by pro-Russian militias.

On the same topic see also the article published by AVIONEWS.