Mourners for the victims of last year’s downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 are gathered in the Ukrainian village of Hrabove to mark the first anniversary of the crash that killed 298 people.
Relatives will read aloud the name of each of the victims, whose plane was shot down by a missile over Ukraine’s Donetsk region on July 17, 2014.
A makeshift memorial has been erected near the crash site where many have come to pay their respects. Friday’s ceremony will include the unveiling of a monument funded by the local rebel government.
Ukraine blames pro-Russian rebels for shooting the plane down, while Moscow and the rebels deny responsibility and blame Ukrainian forces.
Video of apparent crash
In Australia, home to 38 of the victims, the Sydney Daily Telegraph newspaper has published online video showing what it says are pro-Russian rebel forces combing through the wreckage of the plane and discovering it is a commercial airliner rather than a Ukrainian military plane.
The newspaper said the footage was smuggled out of the rebels’ base in Donetsk and obtained by the paper just this week.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Australian radio Thursday that the video shows the crash “was an atrocity, it was in no way an accident.”
Abbott accused the shooters of “reckless indifference” to the nature of their target.
Investigation
Five countries with nationals involved in the disaster — Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine — have established a criminal probe of the crash and are expected to release a final report in October.
Reportedly, the ongoing probe points at a ground-to-air missile that was fired from a village under Russia-backed separatist control in eastern Ukraine.
Those same nations have asked the U.N. to establish an international criminal tribunal to hold to account the parties responsible for the crash.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that establishing an international tribunal would be counterproductive.
The Kremlin issued a statement Thursday saying that Putin made his comments in a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands.
The majority of the 298 people killed one year ago when the plane was hit over eastern Ukraine were Dutch citizens.
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