![]() ![]() European leaders, most notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had been inclined to work with Putin and give him the benefit of the doubt, turned into harsh critics. And nobody has been held accountable for killing nearly 300 people.īut MH17 did change a lot. Pro-Moscow separatists and Russian troops are still in Donbas. MH17, of course, did not change everything. ![]() And with this there was the realization that not only was Moscow responsible for a terrible tragedy, it was mocking the world - and the victims - in its aftermath. There was the Kremlin's formidable disinformation machine adding insult to injury by cranking out a dizzying barrage of crackpot theories about who really shot down the plane. There was the disrespect the pro-Moscow rebels showed to the victims' remains - the images of separatist fighters, smiling with cigarettes dangling from their lips, rifling through and looting the belongings of the dead.Īnd as the evidence poured in - audio recordings, satellite images, and forensic data - showing that the aircraft was almost certainly shot down by a surface-to-air missile fired from rebel-held territory, there was the obfuscation. But it was what came after that really sealed it. It wasn't just that the Netherlands alone lost 193 people, the largest Dutch loss of life since World War II.Īnd it wasn't even that Russia made this all possible by, according to all credible accounts, providing pro-Moscow separatists with a sophisticated BUK surface-to-air missile system capable of shooting down a civilian airliner flying at an altitude of 10,000 meters. It wasn't just that 80 of the victims were children. It wasn't just that the downing of Flight MH17 killed 298 people from 10 countries and four continents. Jwas the day Russia became a rogue state. It was the day when it became impossible to continue even pretending that Vladimir Putin's regime was anything close to respectable. ![]() It was the day the Kremlin lost its last vestiges of credibility. It was the day Moscow's dreams of empire cost European lives. ![]()
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