Six years after the tragic downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), Russia continues to deny it was responsible for the murders of 298 innocent people – civilian passengers and crew – on a commercial flight heading over Ukrainian territory from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
As the jet was flying over territory occupied by Russian and Russian-backed forces on July 17, 2014, it was shot down by a Russian Buk missile. That was the conclusion released in 2018 by the Joint Investigative Team (JIT), which also underscored that the Buk had come from Russia, from a military base in Kursk, and that the surface-to-air missile belonged to the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade.