Under what circumstances was the Malaysia Airlines passenger flight shot down over the Donbas on July 17,2014?

The war in the Donbas was primarily a ground conflict until late May 2014, when a Ukrainian Air Force close air support Su-25 aircraft delivered a rocket strike at enemy positions in Donetsk International Airport.

The Russian-backed rebels also used portable MANPADs to take down several Ukrainian helicopters and low-flying Su-25s, but in July suspicions emerged that they now possessed more sophisti­cated surface-to-air missiles with a longer range. On July 14 they shot down an unsuspecting smaller An-26 military transport flying at the "safe" altitude of 21,000 feet, although its crew managed to eject. On July 16 pro-Russian fighters shot down an Su-25 and damaged another, one of them possibly with a long-range surface­to-air missile. After the An-26 incident on the 14th, the Ukrainian authorities closed the airspace over the Donbas below 32,000 feet to all commercial traffic, still leaving open the higher altitudes that international airlines used. The government did not want to lose the fees it collected for overflying its territory, and airlines had an in­terest in keeping the convenient routes available.

On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, heading from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed in the fields near the mining town of Torez in Donetsk province, instantly killing all 298 people on board. Only 40 kilometers from the Russian border, the depressed mining town of Torez was deep inside rebel-held territory. Still keeping its Soviet-era name, which was given to it after the death of the French Communist leader Maurice Thorez, and with a Lenin statue proudly standing in front of the city hall, the town was now part of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic.

It soon became apparent from examination of the debris that the aircraft was brought down by a missile. Satellite data helped US and German intelligence agencies identify the culprit, a Soviet- developed surface-to-air Buk mobile launching system fired from inside rebel-held territory. Buk is essentially a group of three trucks with mounted rockets, a radar, and a command post; it requires some level of professional training to operate. The rebels had just recently captured one such Ukrainian Army system in the Donbas, although the Ukrainian side claimed it was not operational. The Russian army has many such units in good condition. Wherever the Buk system came from, it was seen in the area in mid-July, both live and on satel­lite, before disappearing immediately after the airplane crash.

Since the Russian-backed fighters did not have an air force at the time, the Ukrainian military did not use proactive air defenses. In contrast, the rebels had a recent history of firing on Ukrainian airplanes, and in the days before the crash they had escalated their attacks into higher altitudes, previously considered safe. They had no reason to shoot down a foreign commercial airliner, but they likely mistook it for a Ukrainian aircraft. The missile strike on July 17 inspired a brief celebration on rebel social media sites, but all signs of it were erased after the true nature of the target became apparent.

Already in 2016, the four-country Joint Investigation Team led by the Netherlands concluded that the aircraft was shot down by the Soviet-made Buk surface-to-air missile fired from the separatist- controlled territory. The team subsequently traced the transfer of the Buk system from Russia, where it belonged to the 53rd Air Defense Missile Brigade stationed in Kursk. In 2019, the public prosecutor's office in the Netherlands began preparing for a criminal trial by charging in absentia the Russian and pro-Russian separatist military figures held responsible for the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.