Four charged in downing of Malaysian airliner over Ukraine

NIEUWEGEIN, Netherlands -- International prosecutors announced murder charges Wednesday against four men -- three of them Russians with military or intelligence backgrounds -- in the missile attack blowing a Malaysia Airlines jet out of the sky over Ukraine five years ago, killing all 298 people aboard.

The case, built with the help of wiretaps, radar images and social media posts, marks the most significant step yet toward tying the tragedy to Moscow, which has backed the pro-Russian separatists fighting to seize control of eastern Ukraine.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was brought down July 17, 2014, over eastern Ukraine by what investigators said was a Buk missile from a Russian anti-aircraft unit. Investigators believe the Ukrainian rebels probably mistook the Boeing 777 passenger jet for a Ukrainian military plane.

Russia repeatedly has denied involvement in the attack, but eastern Ukraine's pro-Moscow rebels have relied heavily on Russian military assistance during the separatist conflict erupting in April 2014 and has claimed more than 13,000 lives.

Associated Press reporters spotted a Buk, an unusually big and sophisticated type of weapon, in the Ukrainian town of Snizhne just hours before the jetliner was shot down, raining debris and bodies down onto farms and sunflower fields.

The investigation team said even if the four defendants may not have pushed the button to launch the missile, they had a role in the preparations.

One of those charged was Russian citizen Igor Girkin, a retired colonel in Russia's main intelligence agency, the FSB. He led Russian and separatist forces in Ukraine's Donetsk region in 2014.

Girkin dismissed the accusations in a telephone interview Wednesday, saying the "insurgents did not shoot down the Boeing." Girkin lives in Moscow.

The three others charged are Russian citizens Sergey Dubinskiy, identified as a former employee of Russia's military intelligence service; Oleg Pulatov, described as a former soldier in military intelligence; and Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian citizen who led a combat unit in the Donetsk.

Girkin led a group of Russian men who crossed into Ukraine and occupied the town of Slovyansk, which became the site of major fighting. He wrote on his social media account around the time of the jetliner attack the rebels had shot down a Ukrainian military plane in the area where the Malaysian aircraft went down. He later deleted that post.

The Joint Investigation Team, made up of detectives from the Netherlands, Malaysia, Australia, Belgium and Ukraine, said the trial will begin with or without the defendants in a top-security courtroom near Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport under Dutch law, which allows trials in absentia. The men could get life in prison if convicted.

The Netherlands has taken the lead in efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice because nearly 200 of those killed were Dutch citizens.