European Court Rules Russia Responsible for MH17 Downing, War Crimes in Ukraine

Judges at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) have ruled that Russia is responsible for several international law violations during its war in Ukraine and the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014 that killed 298 passengers and crew.

Europe's top human rights court handed down the ruling on July 9 in a case brought by the Netherlands -- 196 Dutch nationals were on the flight that was shot down over Ukrainian airspace -- and Ukraine, which accused Russia of murder, torture, rape, destruction of civilian infrastructure and the kidnapping of Ukrainian children since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would ignore the largely symbolic judgment as "we consider it void."

Russia is no longer a signatory to the European Court of Human Rights. While Russia was previously a party to the European Convention on Human Rights, it ceased to be a member in September 2022 after it was expelled from the Council of Europe over its aggression against Ukraine.

Announcing the rulings, laid out in some 501 pages, court President Mattias Guyomar said the ECHR found that Russia’s human rights abuses in Ukraine went beyond any military objective.

Russian forces violated international humanitarian law in Ukraine by killing and injuring "thousands of civilians" in attacks that "created fear and terror," Guyomar said.

He also said that Russia used sexual violence as part of a strategy to break the morale of Ukrainians.

“The use of rape as a weapon of war was an act of extreme atrocity that amounted to torture,” Guyomar added.

Separately, the ECHR found Russia responsible for the July 17, 2014, downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, when the Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down by a Russian-made Buk missile fired from territory in eastern Ukraine that was controlled by Russian-backed separatists.

"Russia is responsible for the downing of flight MH17 and for the deaths of everyone on board," the ECHR said in a statement.

It added that Russia was also responsible for the additional suffering of the victims' next of kin due to its "denial of involvement and obstruction of investigations" into the incident.

"It [the court's ruling] confirms what we have known and felt all along," Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said, welcoming the ruling in a post on his X page.