Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine by a Russian-made Buk missile, the Dutch Safety Board concluded on Tuesday in its final report on the crash in July 2014 that killed all 298 people on board, most of them Dutch. But the long-awaited findings of the board, which was not empowered to address questions of responsibility, did not point the finger at any group or party for launching the missile.
A bitter war was raging in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces when the aircraft was downed and, amid a huge international outcry, many Western experts and governments immediately blamed the rebels. "A 9N314M warhead detonated outside the aeroplane to the left side of the cockpit. This fits the kind of warhead installed in the Buk surface-to-air missile system," said Safety Board head Tjibbe Joustra, presenting the report.
Russia for its part disputes that a Buk may have been used. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov responded to the report by saying there had been "an obvious attempt to draw a biased conclusion, and carry out political orders", according to Russian news agencies. The Safety Board report said that simulations of the missile's trajectory showed it came from somewhere in an area covering some 320 kilometres south-east of Grabovo, Ukraine - an area mostly controlled by separatists.
The makers of the Buk said their tests had shown that the aircraft could not have been hit by a missile fired from rebel-controlled territory. Although the report did not assign blame, it is almost certain to further strain diplomatic ties between the Netherlands and its allies and Russia. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte urged Russia to cooperate fully with a separate criminal investigation that the Netherlands is leading, with participation from Malaysia, Australia, Ukraine and Belgium.
The report also seemed certain to strengthen calls within the airline industry for a review of how information is shared in conflict zones. The board found that Ukraine should have closed the airspace over the conflict zone, and that the 61 airlines that had continued flying there should have recognised the potential danger. It recommended international aviation rules be changed to force operators to be more transparent about their choice of routes.
However, Hennadiy Zubko, head of a separate probe by Ukraine, said Ukrainian authorities had followed the established procedure. "All the recommendations from the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) were carried out ... Ukraine closed its airspace below 9,750 metres (32,000 feet)," he told journalists in Kiev. The British pilots' union BALPA called for states and operators to share accurate information on where it is safe to fly.