Originally Posted by
dixi188
A question re the current war in Ukraine.
If one of the western supplied weapons were to shoot down a civil airliner, would our western leaders be legally responsible and likely to be prosecuted for supplying the weapon?
There are some subtle differences.
The 2014 Donbas situation was a Rebels (IE Terrorists) uprise in a country, where a foreign country (let's call that Russia) was stoking behind the curtains and providing weapons (including crew) to support the terrorists. Weapons, which they kept owning (the Buk&crew immediately went back to Russia, after it was found, a civilian airline was shot down). Russians pulled the trigger on their own decision to shoot.
The 2022/2023 Donbas situation is, that a country is defending its own legitimate territory against an invading foreign country. The defending country does purchase (in whatever form) weapons to do the defense and owns and crews the weapons with their own civilians drawn into the military. All decisions how to use the obtained weapons (either just destroy or to shoot) are by that countries' own military.
So, the reason this MH17 downing went to court, was simply, because it were foreign military with foreign weapons, acting illegally in the country to support the local terrorists. This is effectively state-terrorism, not a "regular" war, where civilian casualties can be expected.