ROTTERDAM, Netherlands — The Dutch public television station NOS broadcast solemn images on Sunday of mourners gathering at half-empty churches and at the homes of families who died when the Malaysia Airlines jet on which they were traveling was shot down over eastern Ukraine. From across this small country, people interviewed on television were trying to address their grief and growing anger over a tragedy that has propelled the ever compromise-seeking Dutch into the hard world of geopolitics and war.

But as the deaths of almost 200 of its citizens aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur have struck the Netherlands with deep sorrow, its leaders have made no effort to channel the country’s grief. No day of public mourning has been declared; nobody is wearing black, not even on television; flags flying at half-staff are rarely seen. Prime Minister Mark Rutte has repeatedly expressed his anger and sadness over the event in which pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine most likely shot down the plane with an antiaircraft missile, and he has been working tirelessly in an international effort to retrieve the bodies. But he has not sat down with any of the relatives of the victims.

The country’s new king, Willem-Alexander, who took the throne in 2013, has been noticeably silent. Though under the Dutch Constitution the king is required to get the permission of the cabinet for important decisions, he has not addressed the nation in a televised speech, but did sign a book of condolences. On Monday he was scheduled to meet privately with relatives of victims.

“None of our leaders are fostering any sense of public spirit,” said Bas Heijne, a columnist for the newspaper NRC Handelsblad. “They come across as cold and insecure.”