The first verdict in the case of the downed Malaysian Boeing will be delivered on November 17 in a Dutch court.

“The reading of the verdict will take half a day and will probably take place in its second half,” the court said in a statement.

There are four defendants in the first case”: Russians Igor Girkin (Strelkov), who called himself “Minister of Defense of the so-called DPR”, ex-head of counterintelligence of the “DPR” Sergey Dubinsky, as well as his subordinates Oleg Pulatov and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko. Earlier, the prosecutor's office demanded that they all be sentenced to life terms in prison.

All the accused are tried in absentia, Oleg Pulatov is the only one of the defendants whose lawyers take part in the process (previously, prosecutors noted how he was confused in his testimony).

At previous hearings, the court presented the case materials to the public, including evidence of the main version of the prosecution: MH17 was shot down by a self-propelled firing system of the Buk complex, which was transported from Russia to the territory of Ukraine. The court also explained why such versions as a bomb explosion on board and the defeat of a Boeing by a Ukrainian plane or a Ukrainian Buk were declared untenable. Read more about it here .

Passenger Boeing-777 of the Malaysian Airlines, operating flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down on July 17, 2014 in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. The crash killed 298 people.