Shot Down

On 17 July 2014, Malaysian Airlines MH17 was shot out of the sky above Ukraine. Aboard were 298 people, 38 of whom were Australians. No one survived.

Subsequently it was shown that the airliner was almost certainly hit by a Buk surface-to-air missile fired by Ukrainian separatists aided by the Russian military. The debris from the plane’s disintegration mid-air was spread over 50 square kilometres, but for weeks rescue teams and investigators were denied access. The Russians have refused to take any responsibility for the deaths.

This is the story of some of the people who boarded that fatal flight and the conflict below them that was doomed to destroy their lives and the happiness of the people they left behind. The fullest account yet published, it is also the story of a continuing clamour for justice. Unsettling, compelling and revealing, will provoke both outrage that this criminal act could have happened and deep sadness for the lives lost.