On 17 July 2014 in eastern Ukraine, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17— a Boeing 777 operating the Amsterdam–Kuala Lumpur route—was shot down. All passengers and crew were killed: 298 people. By number of victims, the disaster became the largest aviation tragedy in Ukraine’s history.
Background
From mid-April 2014, amid Russia’s aggression in eastern Ukraine, active hostilities began. On 2 May 2014, pro-Russian forces used man-portable air-defense systems to shoot down two Ukrainian Army Aviation Mi-24 helicopters near Sloviansk. In June 2014, pro-Russian fighters shot down an Il-76 aircraft as it was approaching Luhansk airport. On 1 July 2014, Ukraine closed the airspace over the combat zone to civilian aviation up to an altitude of 7,900 meters. However, on 14 July 2014 in Luhansk region, five kilometers from the Russian border, an An-26 transport aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force was shot down. On 16 July, a Su-25 was shot down and a second Su-25 was fired upon with a MANPADS. The next day, 17 July, a passenger aircraft was downed—nearly a third of its passengers were children.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 passenger plane was shot down on 17 July 2014 near Torez, Donetsk region. The aircraft was operating scheduled Flight MH17 from Amsterdam in the Netherlands to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. It departed Amsterdam at 13:30 Kyiv time and was headed to Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Contact with the aircraft was lost at around 16:00. After three hours of flight, a missile hit the plane. All passengers and crew were killed—298 people, including 80 children. By the number of deaths, the disaster became the largest aviation tragedy in Ukraine’s history.
The Disaster
An international investigation established that Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine’s Donetsk region by a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile system. That same day, following the crash, a number of airlines—such as Lufthansa, Air France, and Turkish Airlines—announced that they were changing their routes to avoid eastern Ukraine. On the evening of 17 July 2014, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (EUROCONTROL) closed Ukraine’s airspace to civilian aviation.
On 17 July, then-President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko initiated the creation of a state commission, involving experts and international bodies, to investigate the tragedy involving the Malaysia Airlines aircraft.
“We do not rule out that this aircraft was also shot down, and we emphasize that the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not carry out any actions to engage targets in the air,” the president stressed.
The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) named the first four suspects: Sergei Dubinsky (call sign “Khmuryi”), Igor Girkin (call sign “Strelkov”), Oleg Pulatov (call sign “Gyurza”), and Leonid Kharchenko (call sign “Krot”). On 24 May 2018, the governments of Australia and the Netherlands officially blamed Russia for the crash. In November 2019, part of the indictment in the case was submitted to a court in The Hague. The shootdown triggered a new wave of sanctions by Western states against Russia. At a hearing on 17 November 2022, the District Court of The Hague announced that only life imprisonment would be sufficient punishment for Russians Igor Girkin and Sergei Dubinsky, as well as Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko, who were found guilty. On 18 May 2024, a Ukrainian court sentenced Sergei Dubinsky in absentia to 14 years in prison.
Aftermath
Mstyslav Chernov was among the first photographers and videographers to capture the aftermath of the Malaysian aircraft disaster.
“At that time, international agencies could still get accredited in Donbas. We were on duty, shooting stories every day and following the news,” Mstyslav Chernov said in an interview. — “When reports appeared on social media that a transport aircraft had been shot down, we decided to urgently go and film. On the way, we got a call from London saying a passenger plane had gone missing. At first we didn’t even understand what had happened—we thought two planes had disappeared at once. Then everything became clear.”
On the third anniversary of the disaster, 17 July 2017, a National MH17 Memorial was opened in a community in the north of the Netherlands near the country’s largest international airport. According to the landscape designer’s concept, the trees planted in memory of each person who was killed resemble a mourning ribbon when seen from above. The sunflowers planted nearby, in turn, evoke the Ukrainian field where the aircraft wreckage was found.
Mstyslav Chernov is a Ukrainian photographer, an Associated Press journalist, a director, a war correspondent, President of the Ukrainian Association of Professional Photographers, an honorary member of Ukrainian PEN, and a writer. He has covered the Revolution of Dignity, the war in eastern Ukraine, the aftermath of the downing of Malaysia Airlines’ Boeing 777, the Syrian civil war, the battles for Mosul in Iraq, and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, including the siege of Mariupol. For this work he has received awards including the Deutsche Welle Freedom of Speech Award, the Heorhii Gongadze Prize, the Knight International Journalism Awards, the Biagio Agnes Award, the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award, the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award, and the Free Media Awards. In 2022, he was included in the “People of NV 2022 in a Year of War” and “14 Songs, Photos and Art Projects That Became Symbols of Ukrainian Resistance” lists by Forbes Ukraine; and his video materials from Mariupol formed the basis of the film “20 Days in Mariupol,” which in 2024 became the first in the history of Ukrainian cinema to win an Oscar.
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Worked on the piece:
Topic researcher, text author: Vira Labych
Photo editor: Viacheslav Ratynskyi
Literary editor: Yuliia Futei
