‘These were innocent people going about their lives and they have been wantonly killed by Russian-backed rebels, quite possibly, maybe probably using Russian-supplied equipment,’ Abbott said. ‘The idea that Russia can somehow say that none of this has anything to do with them because it happened in Ukrainian airspace frankly does not stand up to any serious scrutiny.’
Russia reacted as if stung by a bee: ‘Without bothering himself about evidence and operating only on speculation, Mr Abbott assigned guilt,’ the foreign ministry said in a statement. ‘Abbott’s statements are unacceptable.’
President of the United States Barack Obama called the deaths ‘an outrage of unspeakable proportions’. He went on to say: ‘From the days of our founding, the Dutch have been close friends and stalwart allies of the United States of America. And today, I want the Dutch people to know that we stand with you, shoulder to shoulder, in our grief and in our absolute determination to get to the bottom of what happened.’ He described the downing of the plane as a global tragedy—‘an Asian airliner was destroyed over European skies, filled with citizens from many countries’—and called for an international investigation into what had happened. Later that night he called Rutte personally to offer his condolences.
In the course of the evening the nationalities of those who had perished became known. The Dutch had suffered the most casualties. One hundred and ninety-six Dutch men, women and children had died. Malaysia suffered forty-two casualties, Australia twenty-seven (although a total of 38 victims called Australia home), Indonesia eleven, the United Kingdom ten, Belgium four, Germany three, the Philippines three, Canada one and New Zealand one. Because some victims had dual citizenships, the numbers and nationalities varied.
Before the tragedy, many people had never heard of the conflict in Ukraine; they did not know about Ukrainian pro-Russian separatists or the annexation of Crimea. Articles about the country’s troubles had hit the news and over the past months more articles appeared, but for most people Ukraine was a country they were not able to point at on a map, a country that did not concern them, a country that was tucked away in a far corner somewhere in between Europe and Russia. Not nestled in the collective conscience, never known as a hot tourist destination, it had now suddenly emerged from its obscurity, albeit for all the wrong reasons.
Slowly, as the realisation of what had happened and its likely implications for the parties involved began to dawn on everyone, the separatists and Ukrainian government forces started to accuse one another of being responsible for shooting the plane down. And disturbing reports were trickling in that insurgents were hindering access to the crash site.
Outraged at the attack itself but also horrified by the footage coming out of Ukraine, the deep grief and distress of families, friends and world leaders slowly evolved into a general feeling of anger and incredulity. Disturbing images—of charred metal, of luggage and documents, of broken and burned human bodies left unattended and uncared for—were flooding social media and broadcast on television news over and over again.
Robert Crolla, the father of Regis, saw those terrible scenes on his television, but he soon turned it off and refused to watch anything connected with the disaster for weeks. Stefan van Nielen’s friends were furious when it became evident that the plane had been blown from the skies: someone wanted this to happen, they said, someone targeted Stefan and all those other people, all those children, and that person consciously pulled the trigger.
The worst outrage was the prevalence of looting. Cameron Dalziel’s widow reported that her husband’s credit cards had been stolen and used. After hearing about the crash, desperate relatives tried calling the mobile phones of their loved ones, only to find them being answered by strangers with ‘eastern European-sounding voices’.
By now relatives of the deceased around the world were becoming increasingly angry at how the disaster was being handled at what people were now calling the ‘crime scene.’ The plane had come down in a foreign place far from where the passengers had boarded and there was no easy access to the site, so the relatives could only guess at what state the bodies were in. Human remains had been lying out in the open in the summer heat.
News coverage of the crash site gave the impression that security was very lax: villagers and separatists strolled through the mangled remains of the aircraft, poking at personal belongings with sticks. In North Tyneside, Barry Sweeney, the father of dedicated Newcastle United fan Liam Sweeney, said: ‘I am sickened at reports of what has been happening over there and I just want Liam home.’
The bereaved demanded to know why it had taken an unbearably long time for the relatives to receive confirmation from Malaysia Airlines that their family members had even been on the plane. But, although the passenger list from Malaysia Airlines was available almost immediately after the crash, this wasn’t sufficient to establish who had actually boarded.
Passenger lists of most airlines are often unreliable and incomplete. The nationality, date, country and place of birth are often not mentioned on aviation lists and it took Malaysia Airlines a couple of days to retrieve all the reliable information from their databases. Most families had thought this information could be retrieved at the press of a button. The entire process of collecting, distributing and verifying the information necessary to inform the relatives about the fate of their loved ones took a while to process.
But there were other questions families and friends wanted answered. One that quickly arose was why Malaysia Airlines MH17 was even flying above a war zone. In the last week alone two Ukrainian military aircraft had been shot down and a third had been damaged by a missile. How could it be possible that an aircraft was cruising around in the Ukrainian skies as if nothing was wrong?
The answer was simple enough. The aircraft was there because the airspace had not been shut down. Malaysia Airlines crew filed a flight plan, and Russia and Ukraine both accepted the aeroplane into their airspace. Although Malaysia Airlines was aware of the conflict on the ground in east Ukraine, they did not consider this a reason for monitoring the area more closely because they had no destinations in Ukraine and they would be flying at a high altitude.
A day before the tragedy, an Antonov An-26 flying at 21,000 feet had been downed with a weapon system that could reach planes flying at cruising altitude, but few airlines or aviation authorities knew that there were medium- or long-range surface-to-air missiles in the area. Military jets typically fly at lower altitudes. It was thought that it would be hard for insurgents to misinterpret an aircraft cruising at great height as a threat and most ground-based weapons couldn’t reach such an altitude anyway.
But some families suspected that operators had continued to fly across the zone until 17 July because it was the quickest and therefore cheapest route for some flights. And this was in part probably true. Ukraine is huge: in area it is the second-largest country in Europe; only Russia is larger. The flight path was known as the ‘highway to Asia’. Avoiding it would have meant a long detour and this would have been quite expensive in terms of extra fuel, as well as being disruptive for the carriers that took this option. Not a single state or international organisation, with the exception of the USA’s Federal Aviation Administration, had publicly warned of any risks to civil aviation, and not a single state prohibited its airlines from using the airspace.
Of course, Ukraine itself had not closed its airspace. To do that, Ukraine would have had to admit that their sovereignty above eastern Ukraine could not be guaranteed. Moreover, every plane flying over Ukraine paid a fee and closing the airspace would have meant losing a significant amount of income for the country.