A fleet of F-16 fighter jets were sent to Ukraine by the Netherlands nine years after MH17 was shot down by Putin’s proxies killing 196 Dutch people.
Up to 42 F-16 fighter jets from the Netherlands are being sent to the Ukraine to support that nation’s conflict with Russia.
The news was delivered at the Eindhoven Airbase, where MH17 catastrophe victims were flown home.
Experts, however, claim that the presumably symbolic action was mostly pragmatic.
A sombre event was held at the Dutch airbase of Eindhoven nine years ago.
The occasion commemorated the arrival of the first bodies of passengers from flight MH17, which was downed over territory controlled by Russian separatists, killing all 298 aboard, including 196 Dutch citizens.
A fleet of F-16 fighter jets were sent to Ukraine by the Netherlands nine years after MH17 was shot down by Putin’s proxies killing 196 Dutch people.
By using proxies loyal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had just captured The Donbas region from Ukraine and was now the focal point of some of the most acrimonious conflicts of Russia’s 2022 invasion, the Malaysia Airlines Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur flight was destroyed in the sky in 2014. In fact, in February, The Hague prosecutors said they had discovered “strong indications” that Putin had given the go-ahead to use the Russian BUK missile system to bring the airliner down.
A fleet of F-16 fighter jets were sent to Ukraine by the Netherlands nine years after MH17 was shot down by Putin’s proxies killing 196 Dutch people.
Following the US’s declaration that it had approved the transfer, the Netherlands’ Prime Minister Mark Rutte stated the country will send up to 42 F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, according to Reuters, in what may have been a symbolic gesture to the 2014 disaster.
“Our government drew this connection, in my opinion, very clearly. As a result of the fact that they received Zelenskyy at the same airfield where the MH17 victims’ corpses were transported when they were returned to the Netherlands, said Chris Colijn, a Ukraine expert at the Dutch media outlet RTL Nederland, to Insider.
According to Colijn, the tragedy also gave Dutch citizens a context for Russia’s conflict with Ukraine.
“I would argue that it truly clicked with people in 2022 when the conflict started. The same Russia that shot this airliner out of the sky and is currently invading Ukraine is responsible for both events, he claimed.