A decade after deadly MH17 crash, the father of one victim is still waiting for Russia to say sorry

HILVERSUM, Netherlands (AP) — Quinn Schansman dreamed of becoming the youngest-ever CEO of an American company. A decade ago, he’d just finished the first year of an international business degree in Amsterdam as a step toward that lofty goal.

But the 18-year-old dual Dutch American citizen’s future — whatever it may have held — was cruelly cut short when he was one of the 298 people killed as a Soviet-era Buk surface-to-air rocket, launched from territory in eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian rebels, destroyed Malaysia Airlines flight 17.

The conflict in Ukraine has since erupted into full-scale war following Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

On Wednesday, Quinn’s father, Thomas Schansman, will read out his name and those of other victims during a commemoration marking 10 years since the tragedy at a monument near Schiphol, the airport flight MH17 left on its way to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014.

Schansman has learned to live with the loss of his son, but what he still can’t accept is Moscow’s blunt denials of responsibility for the downing of the Boeing 777, which shattered in midair and scattered bodies and wreckage over agricultural land and fields of sunflowers in eastern Ukraine.

An international investigation concluded that the Buk missile system belonged to the Russian 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade and that it was driven into Ukraine from a Russian military base near the city of Kursk and returned there after the plane was shot down.

In 2022, after a trial that lasted more than two years, a Dutch court convicted two Russians and a pro-Russian Ukrainian in absentia of murder for their roles in transporting the missile. They were given life prison sentences but remain at large because Russia refused to