Russia murdered MH17 victims twice - Kuleba

The Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, stated this in an interview with the South China Morning Post, published on the 10th anniversary of the tragedy, Ukrinform reports.

The head of Ukrainian diplomacy called such behavior inhumane and accused Russia of blatant, systematic, and shameless lies.

“I regret to say this but Russia has murdered the innocent MH17 victims twice. First, with their missile. Second, with their lies,” Kuleba said in a written interview.

Kuleba said: “It’s therefore difficult for me to comprehend what kind of pain their relatives have gone through during these summer days 10 years ago and in these 10 years … since the very beginning, Russian aggression against Ukraine is not only against Ukraine and Ukrainians, this is a global threat.”

From the very beginning, Ukraine made significant efforts to fully cooperate with the official investigation, the minister emphasized, noting that Russia had been lying about the tragedy and manipulating public opinion for years, trying to dodge responsibility.

According to the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, life imprisonment for those responsible is proof that Russia will never escape prosecution, and sooner or later, the command staff must also be brought to justice.

“Justice has been served, at least partially, by the Dutch court that established the truth and identified those responsible. But I think that even this has not soothed the relatives’ pain completely,” Kuleba added.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, the Malaysia Airlines passenger Boeing-777, which was flying MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed over the temporarily occupied part of Donetsk region on July 17, 2014.

There were 283 passengers and 15 crew members on board, all of whom died.

Former FSB officer Ihor Hirkin (Strelkov), former "Minister of Defense of the DPR", General of the GRU of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, head of the GRU of the DPR Serhii Dubynskyi and Ukrainian citizen Leonid Kharchenko who were found guilty in the case of the downing of flight MH17, must pay 16 million euros in compensation.

This decision was made by a court in the Netherlands.

Hirkin, Dubynskyi and Kharchenko were sentenced to life imprisonment. GRU Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Pulatov was acquitted.