Flight MH17's Dark Shadow

Ten years on we remember the casualties while we consider an end game for Ukraine

One of the things with major disasters is that you cannot fathom the long term impact that is about to be unleashed the moment you hear the news. An attack, an explosion, a mass murder, all are just a starting point of a long journey of not just grief, but of a complete change of perceptions and politics. Ten years ago today I was visiting family in The Netherlands and we all got notice late in the afternoon that a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 which was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur had crashed over Eastern Ukraine. It did not look good, but there were no specific details. No one had any idea yet that 298 people had perished of which 193 were Dutch. There were also many Malaysian and Australian victims. No one really understood the battlefield dynamics between Ukraine and Russian separatists in the Donetsk Oblast. Few people had even heard of this area, yet today it is almost a household name.

But word traveled fast and the horror was televised in all its details all around the world, but in particular on Dutch TV where the incredible pain became palpable with the impossibility of accessing the disaster area to recover the bodies. Rumours of the looting of personal belongings were rife. The return of the bodies of the Dutch passengers in solemn motorcades many days later became a national televised event. Business calls I had that week started with condolences to which I admittedly did not know how to react. It was unprecedented and overwhelming.

As the Dutch were getting ready for the ten year memorial today, it was suggested that everyone knew someone on that ill-fated flight, or at least had some sort of connection to those on board. And yes, among the holiday travellers, business people, academics, even a Dutch senator, there were the owners of Rotterdam’s top Chinese restaurant, Asian Glories: Jenny Loh en her husband Shun Po Fan. They were on their way to Malaysia to visit family. My mother had taken me to the downtown restaurant a few times when I was visiting and of course we got talking to Jenny about her insanely good food, her links to Asia, my years in Hong Kong and everything else. Everyone wanted to talk to Jenny, she was a sort of local celebrity and Asian Glories was the place to be seen and eat and drink good wine. For weeks after the crash I thought about her and we still do as we visit Asian Glories, the place was taken over by her son Kevin and is still a great option for Chinese food in Rotterdam.

Of course, ten years on we know very well what happened on that day and how Russian separatists launched a Buk surface-to-air-missile that exploded left of the cockpit and immediately took the plane down. We also know of how the launcher came from Russia, how Moscow played a key role and how Putin actively involved himself in the cover up. We also now know that the Russian controlled separatists mistook flight MH17 for a Ukrainian military aircraft. Court cases, civil claims, endless diplomatic negotiations ensued. It changed his career as prime minister, said Mark Rutte who is now ready to become the NATO’s freshly minted secretary-general after the summer. He will be incredibly well prepared for the job, MH17 gave him a rapid and brutal induction into how Putin’s Russia operates.

The tragedy of MH17 was a harbinger of what was to come for Ukraine. The brutal invasion, the mass murders, the kidnappings, the insidious leaders in Moscow, the difficult struggle for Europe and the US to turn the tide. We continue to be knee deep in a conflict with no apparent military solution, endless carnage and continued human suffering. Despite the strong rhetoric to liberate the occupied parts of Ukraine including the Crimea and defeat Russia, rumours of peace talks and an eventual settlement have begun to make the rounds. America’s political class, in particular after this week’s announcement of JD Vance as Trump’s running mate is now carefully beginning to evaluate what such a change in that direction might entail. Discussing a settlement is no longer sucking up to Putin or appeasing violence, it simply is an emerging political reality.

There will never be real justice for those that perished over the fields of Donetsk Oblast ten years ago. There is nothing but grief for the surviving families. I remember a grandfather who had lost his son and his wife and two grandchildren in the disaster. In his speech at an MH17 memorial he expressed his confusion over what had happened, “we agreed not to do this anymore, right?” were his words. Like many Dutch he had lived in a world where World War II had become a distant memory, where differences in Europe had been settled and sealed, never to be ripped open again. An era of peace and stability had now ended and more disruption was to come. We are now in the middle of that.

But amid all the noise, the politics and the calls to defeat Russia, I wonder once more what Jenny and her husband went through on that day as they were on their way to see family, flying over an area, over a conflict with which they had absolutely nothing to do. It may be time to seriously focus on the innocent casualties as we try and resolve the many armed conflicts that surround us.