Being a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, Russia might protect the accused persons. The country’s laws do not permit extraditing persons who are in service.
March 9, 2020, has been fixed as the day three Russians and one Ukrainian are to face trial over the downing of Malaysian airline flight Mh17 in 2014.
The Russians are Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy and Oleg Pulatov, while the man from the Ukrainian is Leonid Kharchenko.
The Joint Investigation Team (JIT), however, said it had a long list of persons who were involved in the plot.
The four mentioned though, were said to have transported the missile used to take down the aircraft.
The Dutch-led JIT said international arrest warrants had been sent out for the four men.
Being a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, Russia might protect the accused persons. The country’s laws do not permit extraditing persons who are in service.
The investigators, however, said they had a long list of actors in the incident, as they asked for more witnesses to come forward.
A total of 298 persons perished when the aircraft was shot down.
The passenger jet was considered a collateral accident of international consequence in a civil war between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists in the east of Ukraine which has so far killed over 13,000 people.
Many in that region of the country have been forced to find a new home elsewhere.
Some have chosen to restart their lives near the exclusion zone created after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986.