Five Australian Families of MH17 Victims File ECHR Lawsuit Against Russia

Five Australian families filed a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against Russia seeking 10 million Australian dollars ($7.2 million) for each relative killed in the downing of flight MH17 over Ukraine two years ago, local media reported Saturday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The 3,500-page lawsuit filed by Sydney law firm LHD Lawyers and led by US aviation lawyer Jerry Skinner names Russia and President Vladimir Putin as the defendants, the News Corp Australia Network said.

"We’re all sitting with our fingers crossed — there are some legal determinations they will have to make. We didn’t go to Russia and file suit in Moscow because it’s absolute nonsense to think we could have a realistic chance of success," Skinner was quoted as saying.

Another lawsuit will be filed in the Federal Court of Australia in the coming weeks, on behalf of seven Australian families, targeting Malaysia Airlines for its failure to evaluate the risks of flying over Ukrainian airspace, the media outlet reported.

Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 crashed on July 17, 2014, in eastern Ukraine after being shot down while en route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam. Ukraine and pro-independence militia in the country's southeast have blamed each other for the downing of the MH17 plane.

All 298 people on board were killed, 27 of them Australian passport-holders.

Dutch investigators published a report in October 2015 that said that the Malaysia Airlines aircraft appeared to have been downed using a Russia-produced Buk surface-to-air missile system. It did not identify the exact location from where the missile was fired.

The Russian arms manufacturer that builds Buk missile systems, Almaz-Antey, conducted a separate probe into the crash, finding that the missile that hit the plane could have only been launched by a Buk system located in the region of Zaroshchenske, controlled by Kiev forces at the time of the incident.

Speaking to Sputnik earlier this month, Dutch Safety Board spokeswoman Sara Vernooij said the investigative body has closed its probe into the causes of the flight MH17 crash and is not planning to reopen despite reports and investigations that have been published afterwards.