Irish Examiner View: More questions for Comrade Filatov after airline atrocity

The Russian ambassador to Ireland Yury Filatov holds a media briefing on the situation in Syria at the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Dublin.

When Moscow’s man in Dublin was summoned to his meeting at the Department of Foreign Affairs to be challenged over his country’s imposition of a travel stoplist on 52 Irish politicians and diplomats, it might be expected he was told that it was conduct unbecoming of the Kremlin’s senior official and flag-waver-in-chief in the Republic.

Mr Filatov might have taken it all in a day’s work for an apparatchik who doesn’t form policy but has to defend it. 

But while he was there, he could have been asked whether he had a view on the judgement handed down by a Dutch court this week which has found three men guilty of the murder of 298 people on board flight MH17 which was shot down by a Russian BUK surface-to-air missile eight years ago over Ukraine.

The court imposed sentences of life imprisonment to the Russian nationals Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinsky and a Ukrainian, Leonid Kharchenko. 

The men, who were fighters for the self-proclaimed pro-Russian separatist movement Donetsk People’s Republic, remain at large and may never serve the jail terms.

The court found Moscow had overall control of separatist forces in eastern Ukraine when the plane was destroyed. They didn’t “push the button” but did transport the weapon, a useful case law precedent for war crimes trials.

The 32-month trial took place in a secure courtroom at Schiphol Airport. The victims came from 17 countries and included 198 Dutch nationals, 43 Malaysians, 38 Australians and 10 from the UK. Eighty of the dead were children.

Russia may eventually come to realise that much of the rest of the world does not want to be part of their club, recalling to mind the famous aphorism of Groucho Marx on such matters. 

Groucho also had another saying and would proclaim: “These are my principles, and if you don’t like them . . . well, I have others.” 

Russia would do well to explain what its principles are, because to all intents and purposes, both it, and its servants, appear to have none. 

Perhaps that would be a useful starting point for Mr Filatov.