Malaysian flight MH17 / Ukraine conflict 2014

Have to sleep in a few minutes, just wanted to note that the remains of the Malaysian victims are finally arriving home in a few hours.

we won't be able to top the stoic dignity and elegance of the Dutch ceremony, but I do sure hope we try.

Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 crashed as a result of a Russian-made 9M38 Buk missile, the Dutch Safety Board says.

this is weirdly moving

https://instagram.com/p/8x2ciYiFvb/

how is there not more international blowback from this

I think there will be but it'll take time, it's a complicated situation. The route the Netherlands is going down is probably the correct one - supporting the families in taking legal action against Russia. Although it's assumed that the rebels shot the plane down with a BUK mistaking it for Ukrainian military transport, there's no point in suing them directly. They'll need to show that they got the missiles from Russia, which isn't 100% straightforward. Both armies use them and the rebels captured quite a lot of Ukrainian hardware when they took over Donbass.

Diplomatically, it's not a great time for governments to make a big thing of it - the situation has settled down and the US and EU are pressuring both sides into a negotiated settlement with regional autonomy and elections. Novorossiya flags are coming down and a lot of the people who were nominally in charge of the rebel militias have left and are doing other things. The likes of Strelkov are probably beyond the reach of international justice:

http://i.imgur.com/nHxBtU0.jpg?1

There's also an interesting precedent to be considered in how far a country is directly responsible for the weapons it gives to non-state actors. If Russia is liable for the actions of militias it supports, the US and UK are responsible for the dubious people it provides assistance to in Syria, etc. Legally, it's correct but it's not necessarily something people are going to want to bring to the forefront of public attention.

*thread bump*

Lost in all the news this week was that defense arguments for the four men charged in absentia with shooting down MH17 starts Monday.
https://www.courtmh17.com/en/