AFP, NIEUWEGEIN, NetherlandsInternational investigators yesterday charged four people with murder over the 2014 shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 above rebel-held eastern Ukraine in which 298 people were killed. Russia has vehemently denied all involvement in the downing of MH17, while Girkin yesterday said that Ukrainian separatists were also not implicated. The airliner traveling between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur was torn apart after being hit by a missile over territory in eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russian separatists on July 17, 2014, investigators said. Wreckage was spread over a wide area in an incident that plunged relations between Moscow and the West, already tense over the conflict in eastern Ukraine, deep into crisis. Prosecutors said Girkin was a former colonel in Russia’s FSB intelligence agency and was the self-declared minister of defense in the separatist administration in eastern Ukraine.

Source: Taipei Times June 19, 2019 15:56 UTC