Investigators: Buk Missile From Russian Antiaircraft Brigade Downed Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 in Donetsk, Ukraine

A Dutch-led international criminal investigation has established that the Buk missile that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014 came from Russia’s 53rd Antiaircraft Missile Brigade.

The Joint Investigative Team (JIT), comprising authorities from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands, and Ukraine, made the announcement at a press conference on May 24 in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

MH17 was shot down over the conflict zone in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board.

Bellingcat, a British-based team of open-source researchers investigating the crash, had already identified the 53rd Antiaircraft Missile Brigade as being the likely source of the missile that investigators say brought down the jet.