Visitors pay their respects at the National Monument in memory to the victims of flight MH17 airplane crash. Photo: Robin Utrecht/AFP via Getty Images

The decision marks the first time an international court has found Russia guilty of international human rights abuses since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, and ruled on Russia’s role in the MH17 disaster.

The judges are set to rule on a total of four cases, brought against Russia by Ukraine and the Netherlands, including the abduction of Ukrainian children to Russia in 2014 and violations during the armed conflict in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Donbas.

“In none of the conflicts previously before [the Court had] there been such near universal condemnation of the ‘flagrant’ disregard by the respondent State for the foundations of the international legal order established after the Second World War,” said the Strasbourg-based court in its judgment.

Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014, when it was hit by a surface-to-air missile over eastern Ukraine, during the conflict between pro-Russia rebels and Ukrainian forces in the region. All 298 passengers on board were killed, among them 196 Dutch citizens.

In November 2022, a Dutch court found guilty of murder and sentenced (in absentia) to life imprisonment Russian nationals Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy and Ukrainian national Leonid Kharchenko.

Girkin, a pro-war Russian nationalist, was also sentenced by Russia to four years on charges of inciting extremism after complaining too much about President Vladimir Putin’s leadership of the war against Ukraine.

The Dutch court also confirmed a previous Dutch-led joint international investigation concluded in 2018 that the airliner was downed by a surface-to-air missile launched from pro-Russian separatist-controlled territory in Eastern Ukraine.

In January 2023, a Dutch court ruled that the Netherlands could bring a case before the European Court of Human Rights over the downing of the flight. It argued that Russia was responsible for the crash, due to its support for the self-proclaimed republics of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Russian authorities have repeatedly denied any involvement in the attack.

The United Nations Aviation Council found Russia responsible for downing the plane in May, stating that it failed to uphold its obligations under international air law, which requires that states “refrain from resorting to the use of weapons against civil aircraft in flight.”

The ECHR, an international court of the Council of Europe, stated that it had jurisdiction to rule on complaints concerning events that occurred before Sept. 16, 2022, when Russia was excluded from the organization.