As war rages on in Ukraine, why aren’t the Dutch talking about MH-17?
Last weekend, I found myself in De Balie, a leading Dutch center of culture and debate discussing the European response to the war in Ukraine with three politicians: two from the Netherlands, plus one from Belarus, who lives in exile.
It was an interesting if unsurprising conversation: Franak Viacorka, the Belarusian opposition politician, made a strong case for an urgent need to identify and close the loopholes in sanctions that both the Russian and Belarusian regimes are using to survive.
The Dutch politicians, parliamentarians for the national and European parliaments, talked about the Netherlands’ response to the war: their optimism about the Dutch plan to wean the country off Russian energy and the European determination to stand by Ukraine whatever Zelensky’s government decides to do next, including, they both reiterated, the return of the Crimea to Ukrainian control.
But forty minutes into the discussion, I found myself increasingly aware of an elephant in the room. Among all Europeans, it was the Dutch who had experienced first-hand the effects of Putin’s war in Ukraine when in 2014, a Russian anti-aircraft Buk missile shot down flight MH-17 killing all 298 passengers onboard, including more than 80 children.