Putin’s MH17 link not the end

It has taken more than eight years for investigators to say out loud what everyone assumed from the start – that Vladimir Putin’s evil thumbprints were all over the tragic shooting down in July 2014 of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. There were, the investigators announced in The Hague on Wednesday, “strong indications” that the Russian tyrant made the decision to provide pro-Kremlin separatists in eastern Ukraine with the Buk TELAR missile system that brought down the aircraft, killing all 298 passengers and crew, including 38 who called Australia home.

Citing phone intercepts, the five-nation, Dutch-led joint investigation team, which included Australians, concluded: “There is concrete information that the separatists’ request (for weapons of the type that brought down MH17) was presented to the President (Putin), and that this request was granted.” The investigation team added: “Although we speak of strong indications, the high bar of complete and conclusive evidence is not reached.”

But it is imperative that what was, in effect, the appalling, senseless murder of 298 entirely innocent civilians is not allowed to rest there, especially given that on Wednesday the investigation team also announced the closure of its formal probe into the tragedy. The investigation, Dutch Deputy Chief Public Prosecutor Digna van Boetzelaer said, had “reached its limit. All leads have been exhausted. Our findings are insufficient for the prosecution of new suspects”.

That may be so. And it may be the case that under Dutch law Mr Putin, as a foreign head of state, enjoys immunity from prosecution. But the memory of those killed aboard MH17 and the terrible daily toll of barbaric atrocities being committed by Mr Putin in Ukraine make it imperative that investigations into his role in MH17 must not be allowed to lapse, however long it takes to bring him to book.

In November last year an international court under Dutch jurisdiction found Russia was directly responsible for, and in charge of, fighting in the Donetsk People’s Republic where MH17 was downed. The Dutch judges handed down life sentences to three pro-Russian separatists found guilty in absentia of mass murder. Mr Putin’s atrocities – be they in relation to MH17, his war on Ukraine, or his persecution of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny – show him to be in the cruellest and most savage Stalinist mould. The MH17 investigators may have halted their probe but that must not be the end of the drive to bring the Russian despot to book for his appalling crimes against humanity.