REUTERS

The SBU Security Service of Ukraine has identified over 150 persons who partook in the transportation from Russia to Donbas of the Buk anti-aircraft missile launcher, which shot down the Malaysian Airlines' Boeing flight MH17 in July 2014.

In particular, over five years of investigation, the SBU has handed over to the Joint Investigation Team, which includes representatives from Ukraine, the Netherlands, Belgium and Australia, a vast array of evidence that "allows reassemble the circumstances of the crime and identify those involved in this terrorist act," according to the SBU's press center.

As of today, the investigation has established "the exact timing and route by which the transporter-erector-launcher and radar of the Buk anti-aircraft missile system was illegally transported from the territory of the Russian Federation to Ukraine", "the time of the anti-aircraft missile launch at a passenger plane Boeing 777-200 9M-MRD, and the missile launch site", as well as the timing and route by which the Buk was transported back to Russia, and "over 150 people involved in transporting the Buk anti-aircraft system from Russia to the temporarily occupied territory of Luhansk and Donetsk regions and back to the Russian Federation, its guarding and deployment at a firing position for shooting down the plane."

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Criminal cases against the suspects are being transferred to the competent authority of the Netherlands for their further criminal prosecution.

UNIAN memo. Malaysia Airlines' MH17 Boeing 777 heading from Amsterdam for Kuala Lumpur was shot down on July 17, 2014, over militant-occupied territory in Donetsk region. All 298 people on board who were citizens of 10 countries were killed in the crash. The majority of the victims, 196, were citizens of the Netherlands. The Dutch Safety Board October 13, 2015, issued a report on the causes of the accident. It was revealed that the plane had been shot down by a Buk anti-aircraft missile system. The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) in its report published on September 28, 2016, confirmed that the plane had been downed by a Russian-made Buk brought to Ukraine from Russia.

On June 19, 2019, JIT investigators accused four pro-Russian military intelligence officers of involvement in a missile attack that shot down the MH17. The first four suspects in the MH17 case are Russian terrorist Igor Girkin (AKA "Strelkov"), who in the summer of 2014 was the so-called "Minister of Defense of the Donetsk People's Republic" ("DPR"); Russian General Sergei Dubinsky (nom de guerre "Khmuryi"), who led the "DPR intelligence;" Oleg Pulatov (nom de guerre "Gyurza"), who in 2014 headed of "the 2nd division of the GRU of the DPR;" as well as Leonid Kharchenko (nom de guerre "Krot"), who was the leader of the "reconnaissance battalion" of Russia-led forces.

The trial of the suspects in the downing of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing over Donbas in the summer of 2014 will begin on March 9, 2020.