Enduring love

I don’t want it to be 10 years.

17 July 2024 will mark a decade since our son Jack (aged 25) and 297 other people on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 were killed when it was shot down over Ukraine.

Ten years on Jack does not have his life, and we don’t have him present in our lives.

The Dutch presiding judge in the MH17 trial, Hendrik Steenhuis, spoke about its impacts on families in his judgement delivered on 17 November 2022, eight years and four months after MH17 was shot down.

“It was made clear to the court, with great effect, just how completely different those relatives’ lives were after the MH17 crash: clearly, there was life before the crash and life after it.”

Our family has lived these two lives. The life we have now is different. It feels hollowed out to me. It is true that the intensity of grief softens over time. But the longing for Jack and the emptiness we feel at his absence stays with us. A Polish saying on mourning says that over time the grief leaves your heart and enters your bones. That sounds right. The pain is less raw, but we carry the sadness at Jack’s death in our bones now, and we always will.

Judge Steenhuis went on to talk about the impact of the missile:

“That destructive force led, most importantly, to the deaths of 298 people, men, women and children on board. In an instant, without warning, their lives, and those of their loved ones seated next to them, were cruelly ended. In that single moment, these people were robbed of their life and future.”

That is the most important thing. Jack and everyone else had their lives violently and wrongly taken from them.

The investigation had taken eight years (it has been suspended for now, but could reopen) and the trial two and a half years. Of the four accused, three were found guilty and one was acquitted. For me, all that points to a meticulously fair and thorough process.

The three men convicted are not the only responsible parties. Judge Steenhuis was at pains to highlight the central role of the Russian Federation in the conflict and the shooting down of MH17. Russia gave the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) separatists, “financial assistance, provided and trained troops and supplied arms and other goods”. Senior people in the Russian Federation were in close communication with the DPR, involved in making decisions and coordinating military actions in Ukraine. In other words, Russia was directing everything.

But to this day the Russian Federation has denied any responsibility for MH17. This is deeply offensive, but it’s not surprising. Realistically, we expect there will be no admission of responsibility while Putin is in power, and maybe never. This adds the wrong of wilful deceit to the wrong of the murder of 298 people.

Now those wrongs — the killing and the lies — have been magnified many times over through Russia’s unjustified and illegal invasion of Ukraine. While the shooting down of MH17 may have been a mistake, the invasion of Ukraine was calculated. The wholesale destruction of cities, the targeted bombing of schools and hospitals, the summary executions of civilians and captured soldiers, the kidnapping of children, are all deliberate actions designed to intimidate and subjugate the people of Ukraine. But the Ukrainian people have refused to be subjugated.

Our family feels a connection with the people of Ukraine. We experienced their kindness and sympathy after MH17 happened. Although we can’t know the depth of the suffering they are enduring now, we share grief at the senseless destruction and death of people we love.

I was shocked then to hear reports of the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill’s views on the war. On March 27 this year, The World Russian People’s Council, headed by Patriarch Kirill, published a statement saying the conflict in Ukraine was a “Holy War” (notice they didn’t call it a “Holy Special Military Operation”). It said Russia and its people were defending “the sole spiritual space of Holy Rus” and fulfilling their mission of Restrainer against the west “which has fallen into Satanism”. The document also said “the entire territory of present day Ukraine should be included in the area of Russia’s exclusive influence”.

As a person of Christian faith myself, I found it disturbing and bewildering that Patriarch Kirill could seek to justify Russia’s war against Ukraine by claiming that it fulfils God’s mandate. 

I believe the vision Jesus proclaimed can never be equated with the purposes of any nation state, not Russia, not America, no matter how that is wrapped up in religious language. Jesus said “Blessed are the peacemakers”, and instructed his followers “to love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). By contrast Russia’s violent invasion of Ukraine has been marked by indiscriminate brutality and disregard for the rights and worth of other human beings, including civilians. 

I do not understand how Patriarch Kirill could equate these acts with the mission and purposes of Christ. That is totally repugnant to me. Patriarch Kirill appears to have forgotten who he is meant to be following. Croation American theologian Miroslav Volf has said, “the price monotheism always has to pay for its alliance with exclusive nationalism is the loss of its soul.”

Russia is not the only nation that has sought to use religion to justify its actions and paint itself as right and good and those it opposes as evil and wrong. The United States has used God and faith to bolster its self-appointed role as “protector of the free world”. My own country, Australia, is not very religious, but we have gone along with this arrogant nationalism and mistakenly joined the US in wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan — unnecessary wars on the other side of the world that we had little or nothing to do with. We were involved in enormous death and destruction for no good purpose. Many Australians protested against our involvement in these conflicts, but our government went ahead anyway.

Pondering all this challenged me again about how I think about Russia and the Russian people. In the early days of MH17 I had vengeful daydreams — I know those came from a place of impotent anger and deep pain.

Later, I with others wrote an open letter to the Russian people at the time Russia hosted the World Cup (2018). In that letter we said, “… we have to separate ordinary Russian people from the individuals responsible — the chain of command that led to the shooting down of MH17”. Quite a few comments were left on the Novaya Gazeta website. A few people thought the letter was fake. Some appreciated our lack of blame and “humanity”, some thought our attitude was an example of soft western liberalism. Others saw us as naïve, and said don’t be so sure the Russian people are not partly responsible for this atrocity.

What do I think now?

I don’t know what it is like to be Russian and to live in Russia. I don’t understand how a seemingly large majority can vote for a leader who appears to care so little for the value of human life and the welfare of his own people, let alone others. A leader who so easily sends thousands of his citizens to Ukraine, to fight and many to die or be wounded. A leader whose response to any voices raised in opposition to his policies, is to exile, imprison or permanently silence those voices. Maybe some support Putin due to misinformation and ignorance of how things really are. Perhaps many others see no realistic alternative.

At the same time, I am amazed at the courage of Russian journalists, politicians and others who speak out against the war and call the government to account for it and other wrongs. I am humbled by the bravery of ordinary Russian citizens who risk arrest, jail or worse, for simply expressing their views in protest and seeking to uphold their rights and the rights of others.

A question I keep asking myself is, “How do I respond appropriately to the wrongfulness of Jack’s death?” I am still working out the response, but I feel it has to include commitment to the truth (even when it’s against us), calling out lies and baseless claims (what we call “bullshit” in Australia) and, trying in whatever way I can to work against people having their lives taken, abused, or otherwise marred by others. Jack was a strong person, but he hated bullies and fairness mattered to him, and I want to honour those qualities of his.

At the same time I believe Christian faith calls me to resist the easy division of peoples into good and bad, right and wrong. And even when there is a clear aggressor, I have to be concerned about their good as well as for the victims. All that is hard to do.

I know, as the world does, that Russia is responsible for the death of my son and all on board MH17. I want Russia to cease its brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine. I want there to be accountability and truth telling for those actions and all the wrong actions that have happened in this war (that includes any wrongs the Ukrainian side has committed).

But I also believe I can’t just label Russia and Russian people as the enemy. I don’t know where that proceeds. Perhaps, as Volf suggests, it starts with the recognition of each other’s humanity and right to exist. And it continues with the resolve to keep alive our capacity to speak across the things that divide us, however deep and longstanding those differences may be. This letter is part of my attempt to move in that direction.

Jon O’Brien, Sydney, Australia