Piece by piece – pieces of the plane, pieces of evidence, pieces of phone conversation and cellphone records, pieces of the victims – Dutch prosecutors have put together evidence good enough to go to court. On Sept. 28 they announced that when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was blown out of the sky over Ukraine in 2014, the dirty work was done by a Russian ground-to-air missile. Importantly, they concluded it was brought into the war zone earlier that day, and the launcher was taken back into Russia that night.
The political and geopolitical consequences of these findings are likely to be with us for a long time as the victims’ families, prosecutors, and Western and Asian governments involved seek justice, and the Russians throw up clouds of denials and disinformation. But for the 298 people on board MH17 that day, of course, all that is moot.
