Denial of justice, as MH17 murderers escape penalty

Vladimir Putin was not mentioned by name last Thursday when judges of The Hague District Court in The Netherlands handed down life sentences to three Russian separatists found guilty of mass murder by the “grotesque” and “cruel” downing of Malaysia Airlines MH17 over Ukraine on July 17, 2014. But the court’s finding that the separatists had direct communication with “Moscow” and “the Kremlin” confirmed the Russian tyrant was at the heart of the tragedy that killed 298 innocent civilians, including 38 Australians. There is no doubt who Tony Abbott had in mind when, writing in The Weekend Australian about the atrocity, he concluded: “Not since Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot has a national leader been responsible for such evil.” As Mr Abbott wrote of the Russian Buk surface-to-air missile that was brought across the border into Ukraine and returned immediately after the Boeing 777 was destroyed: “Russian missile batteries don’t cross borders by accident. Ultimate responsibility for this atrocity rests with the Russian dictator.”

If Mr Putin had a shred of concern for humanity, he would agree to Australia’s demand for the handing over of the three men given life sentences by the Dutch court, all of whom were government players. They are Igor Girkin, a former colonel in the FSB, Russia’s security service and one-time employer of Mr Putin; Sergey Dubinsky, a former officer of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, and; Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian commander of separatist forces in Donbas. The chances of Mr Putin doing the decent thing look remote. But the world must not give up on demanding he does.

As Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, the Netherlands-based investigative journalists’ group that first established the Buk missile’s link to Russia’s 53rdAntiaircraft Missile Brigade, said: “Had the West stood up (more forcefully) to Russian aggression in 2014, we may have avoided the situation we’re in today.’’

Atrocities committed by Mr Putin and his forces in Ukraine over the past nine months defy perceptions of Russia as a civilised nation. Mr Putin’s current tactic of destroying power sources that could prevent Ukrainians perishing in the freezing winter is a terrible crime. It suggests a cruel, evil mindset on a par with other despots. His regime’s disregard for human life and laws that are supposed to govern relations between sovereign states was a recurring theme in the Dutch court’s judgment.

Russia’s attitude casts serious doubt over whatever hopes the Albanese government has that Moscow will help track down the Russian cyber criminals who escalated their assault on Medibank and its customers at the weekend. The AFP last week said the Medibank hack came from Russian syndicates with a history of “significant breaches in countries around the world”. Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil accused Mr Putin of harbouring the cyber criminals.

Any half-decent country aware of the threat such a hack poses to health records of innocent people would have responded immediately to Australia’s plea. But, as the Dutch court’s verdict confirms, Mr Putin’s Russia has become a rogue state, far removed from the bounds of civilised conduct. Mr Abbott, who got short shrift when he wanted to “shirt-front” Mr Putin on the sidelines of an APEC summit in Beijing after the MH17 tragedy, was correct when he wrote: “As Russia’s indiscriminate terror bombardment of Ukrainian cities shows, Putin has always treated moral distinctions with complete contempt. This is someone who has invaded his neighbours and murdered his opponents whenever and wherever he thought he could get away with it, and the horror is that he’s been allowed to get away with it for too long.”