When the researchers called his home number and recorded the Russian officer’s voice, it turned out to be very similar to the voice of ‘Orion’ in the radio transmission intercepted by Ukrainian officials in 2014. The voice was unusually high for a man; at the press conference it was described as ‘womanish’. Even though both audio fragments were too short for forensic computer-assisted audio analysis, a linguistic and acoustic comparison of the two voices compellingly pointed to the voices belonging to the same person.
As a result, on 25 May 2018, Australia and the Netherlands put out a statement. They were officially holding Russia responsible for its part in the downing of MH17. The Netherlands and Australia were now convinced that Russia was responsible for the deployment of the Buk installation that was used to down MH17 and were finally taking the next step by formally holding Russia accountable. Holding the Russian Federation responsible under international law was separate, but complementary, to the prosecution of individual suspects. It was up to the Dutch Public Prosecution Service to decide if and when individuals would be identified as suspects and indicted. Locating these suspects was still an ongoing JIT investigation.
President Putin rejected these accusations by the Netherlands and Australia. When asked if a Russian missile had shot down the aircraft, Putin replied: ‘No, of course not.’ He added that Moscow did not trust the Dutch-led MH17 inquiry, because Russia wasn’t given full access to its work. Russia’s defence ministry also denied supplying the Buk. Experts in Moscow were still in the process of analysing videos presented by Dutch investigators, the ministry said. According to the Dutch JIT coordinator Fred Westerbeke, the investigation was in its ‘final phase’ and it wouldn’t take many more years to find missing information. Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop called for international support for the Dutch–Australian legal initiative.
That same month the world turned its focus to Russia for a totally different reason: Russia was to host the football World Cup. On the eve of the World Cup, eleven MH17 relatives wrote a compelling and heartfelt letter to the Russian people. The letter began: ‘In June the world will turn its eyes toward Russia for the Football World Cup. It will be a long awaited and joyous event. For most Russians it will also be an occasion of deep national pride. Some of us who write these words are passionate followers of football, others are not. But none of us will be able to share in this World Cup in the way we would have done before. We have something in common that gives this event and the place in which it is held, a different, darker meaning.’
The letter went on to explain how their lives were shattered and how three years on they still struggled to comprehend what happened that day. That their children, parents, brothers, sisters and partners were killed in a war, but that they were aware their loved ones were not the only ones who had lost their lives.
‘More than 10,000 people have been killed, most of them civilians. Their families are grieving like ours, not understanding why the people they love have been snatched from them. It is the finality of death that is so painful. We could live with a separation, even of years, if we knew it had an end.
‘We are not the same people we were before. The world we live in is darker and less hopeful. We have struggled to maintain faith in human goodness. It may be that some of us will find some sense of purpose and happiness again. But we will always be marked by the brutal and sudden death of those we love.’
The open letter to Russia sought to hold ‘the chain of command that led to the shooting down of MH17’ accountable for the incident, whilst accepting the innocence of ‘ordinary Russian people’.
‘Like all who have suffered the violent death of people we love, we are tempted to respond with hate. But we have to separate ordinary Russian people from the individuals responsible—the chain of command that led to the shooting down of MH17. Most of us don’t know Russian people well. Hate and distrust come partly from ignorance and when we know more of a person’s story, that can change how we see things.’ The letter went on to ask the Russian government to cooperate fully with the international investigation into MH17.
‘It will not bring our families back, but the truth does matter, the truth does exist and we want those responsible for MH17 to be identified and held accountable. We have confidence in the thoroughness and impartiality of the work conducted by the Joint Investigation Team. The same cannot be said about the reporting on MH17 coming out of Russian state media channels.’ The letter questioned whether the Russian people really wanted to live in a country where the truth does not exist.
At the end of the letter the writers commemorated Flight 9268, an international chartered passenger flight operated by Russian Metrojet. On 31 October 2015 the Airbus carrying 224 passengers and crew was destroyed by a bomb above the northern Sinai following its departure from Sharm El Sheikh International Airport, Egypt, en route to Pulkovo airport, St Petersburg, Russia, killing everyone on board. The plane was mostly filled with tourists.
‘In 2014 our children and families lay lifeless amidst the fields and sunflowers of Eastern Ukraine. In 2015 Russian children and families lay lifeless on the stones and sand of the Egyptian desert. In death we are not so different. Barriers of language, culture, differences in race or religion no longer matter. What remains is loss and love. Human loss and love.’
The letter was signed by:
Jon and Meryn O’Brien (Jack O’Brien, 25), Australia
Jeremy and Louise Pocock (Ben Pocock, 20), United Kingdom
Rob Fredriksz and Silene Fredriksz-Hoogzand (Bryce Fredriksz, 23, Daisy Oehlers, 20), Netherlands
Joanna Anderson (Stephen Anderson, 44), United Kingdom
Claudio Villaca-Vanetta (Glenn R. Thomas, 49), United Kingdom
Hans de Borst (Elsemiek de Borst, 17), Netherlands
Paul Guard (Roger Guard, 67, Jill Guard, 62), Australia
Every year since the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine on 17 July 2014, the US State Department had issued a statement to mark the anniversary. But on the anniversary of 2018 the State Department was conspicuously silent about it.
Officials had prepared a draft statement that was sharply critical of Russia for its alleged role in the attack. The statement was to be issued a day after Donald Trump met with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki but, for reasons the State Department did not explain, it never was. Based on a cached version of the US embassy’s website in Moscow, it appeared on the home page briefly on Tuesday 17 July, but then it was quickly taken down.
Trump lavished praise on Putin in Helsinki and stunned US lawmakers and national security experts by siding with Russia against the US intelligence community’s assessments of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump later claimed he misspoke regarding Russia’s interference, when he said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t’. The sentence Trump referred to was: ‘I don’t see any reason it would be Russia.’
Rin Norris and Anthony Maslin, who had lost their three children and the children’s grandfather, were beside themselves with rage. Anthony delivered a scathing attack on Donald Trump over his attitude towards Russia. He took his anger to Facebook, posting an open letter addressed to Trump, saying the MH17 tragedy ‘destroyed our life and many other lives in the process’.
‘Mr Trump, you invented and speak a lot about “fake news”. But let’s try talking about something that is not fake,’ he wrote in his Facebook post, ‘let’s call them irrefutable facts. That passenger flight MH17 was shot out of the sky and 298 innocent people were murdered is an irrefutable fact,’ he wrote alongside a photo of his children Mo, Evie and Otis. Anthony Maslin went on to accuse Trump of kissing Putin’s arse, also describing this an irrefutable fact; he said he did not feel anger toward the two men, but something much worse—pity. ‘You have no empathy for your fellow man, and you clearly have no idea what love is. So you have nothing.’