The five names that shrouded a terrible anniversary

Of all the names remembered at the ceremony to mark the 10th anniversary of the downing of flight MH17, five sent a chill down the quiet audience gathered in Parliament House’s Great Hall in Canberra.

Beneath the hall’s tapestry of an Australian forest of gum trees, and behind a wreath dotted with sunflowers in recognition of the Ukrainian field over which the remnants of the Malaysia Airlines plane fell, both Foreign Minister Penny Wong and her predecessor, Julie Bishop, uttered those five names.

Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy and Leonid Kharchenko were convicted – in absentia – in 2022 for their involvement in firing the missile that brought down the Boeing 777 and killed its 298 passengers and crew.

Sergey Muchkaev has had sanctions imposed on him by Australia for his role as commander of the Russian brigade that supplied the missile that brought down the doomed flight from Amsterdam en route to Kuala Lumpur.

And Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president then and still today – who, according to a joint investigative team last year which found there was “strong indications”, approved the supply of the missile system that ended the lives of men, women and children from around the world.

These five men, and their actions, have been found to be responsible for an event that both Wong and Bishop described as “incomprehensible”. Whether they will be held to account, however, remains trapped in international diplomacy.

A joint investigative team found there was “strong indications” Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the supply of the missile system that downed MH17.Credit: AP

Russia, mired in a broader war in Ukraine, has withdrawn from the action started by the Netherlands and Australia in the International Civil Aviation Organisation which offered at least one avenue to true justice.

“We will not be deterred in our commitment to hold Russia to account,” Wong declared.

Bishop, wearing an Order of Merit presented to her by the Dutch government, was just as resolute.

“On behalf of the Australians, from our military, police, diplomatic, consulate, we call personnel that were involved in our response, and on behalf of those who continue the fight to this day – for truth and justice and accountability,” she said.

The five names mentioned by Wong and Bishop pale into insignificance against the names of the 38 Australian residents who died alongside 193 people from the Netherlands, 43 from Malaysia, 12 from Indonesia, 10 from Britain, four from Germany and Belgium, and three from New Zealand.

Many of those loved ones of the 38 Australian residents were on hand at Wednesday’s ceremony, making the short trip from their seats to the front of the Great Hall where they paused, said a small prayer, and placed a small yellow flower on a commemorative wreath.

Ten years on from that single moment that changed their lives, the hurt and pain was obvious across all of them.

As Wong noted, flight code MH17 had become an “impersonal signifier” of the most personal loss.

“Of the sudden violence of that day. Of the cheating of innocence,” Wong said.

“Children travelling across continents and oceans to be home in time for a new school term. Future’s promise broken. Families returning from a European summer holiday, years in the dreaming, giddy with stories that would never mellow into memories.

“Mothers, fathers, grandparents. Pillars of communities. Lives of service cut short. Each a singular tragedy and an infinite loss.”

Families of the victims place flowers on a wreath during a ceremony marking 10 years since the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), in the Great Hall at Parliament House in Canberra. Credit: AAP

That infinite loss was obvious in the short poem read by Malcolm Garrett, the brother-in-law of Jill and Roger Guard who died aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, that reflected on the sunflower field across which the plane’s debris was scattered.

“No cause can justify such pain. No righteous stands, no grander plan absolves the crimes of callous men, man’s inhumanity to man,” he said.

The five men named by Wong and Bishop were not in the Great Hall to feel the pain their actions caused a decade ago. But they remain uppermost in the minds of the people across the world still seeking justice for the terrible event of July 17, 2014, over the skies of Ukraine.

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