Dutch prosecutors are to charge four people with murder over the shooting down of flight MH17 over Ukraine, with a trial due early next year, relatives of the victims has said.

"There is a court case on March 9 2020 against four people for murder," said Silene Fredriksz, whose son and daughter-in-law were killed in the disaster.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine nearly five years ago killing 298 people on board.

The Dutch-led probe said it was going to prosecute Russian nationals Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky and Oleg Pulatov, as well as Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko.

It said they would be placed on national and international wanted lists.

Mr Girkin, who is also known as Igor Strelkov, has denied that pro-Russian separatists were behind the missile attack.



"I can only say that rebels did not shoot down the Boeing," he told Russia's Interfax news agency.

The suspects may be tried in absentia, however, as the Netherlands has said Russia has not cooperated with the investigation and is not expected to hand over anyone charged.

Russia has said it does not trust the investigation.

"Russia was unable to take part in the investigation despite expressing an interest right from the start and trying to join it", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Suspects set to be named today in the shooting down of flight MH17 over Ukraine five years ago.



All 298 people on board the Malaysia Airlines plane were killedhttps://t.co/JAfnDpBGdu pic.twitter.com/qCfRJdSbkU — AFP news agency (@AFP) June 19, 2019

MH17 was shot out of the sky on 17 July 2014, over territory held by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine asit was flying from Amsterdam to the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.

Most of the victims were Dutch. A joint investigation team formed in 2014 by Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine found that the plane was shot down by a Russian missile.

The Russian government denies having lent any support to pro-Russia rebels fighting Ukrainian government troops and also denies any involvement in shooting down the plane.

Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin called MH17's downing a "terrible tragedy" but said that Moscow was not to blame and that there are other explanations for what happened.

The governments of the Netherlands and Australia have said they hold Russia legally responsible.

Prosecutors have previously said the missile system that brought down the plane came from the Russian 53rd Anti-Aircraft Brigade, based in the western Russian city of Kursk.

They said their next step would be to identify individual culprits and to attempt to put them on trial.