Most Australians were unfamiliar with Ukraine until the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. Thirty-eight Australians were among the 298 passengers murdered when a Russian mobile rocket launcher destroyed this civilian airliner flying over Eastern Ukraine.

The Joint Investigative Team, in which Australia participated, reported in May that the Buk missile from the 53rd Brigade of the Russian army crossed into disputed Ukraine from the Russian Federation. Both then and now Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin have displayed a cruel indifference to the Russian Federation’s role in causing these tragic and unnecessary deaths of citizens from around the world.

Women amid the debris of downed flight MH17 in East Ukraine. Credit:Kate Geraghty

The United States, the United Kingdom and Canada have responded to Russia’s increasing international aggression with a democratic response called the Magnitsky legislation. These laws confront Russian and other authoritarian countries’ corruption and human rights abuses by imposing bars on visa entry, the moving of funds and the education of the families of perpetrators. Partially in response to Russia’s insolent indifference to the murder of our citizens by its army, I am moving an Australian version of the Global Magnitsky Act as a private member’s bill on Monday in the House of Representatives.

Magnitsky Acts are becoming a new weapon in the West to sanction government officials and others connected with authoritarian governments who engage in serious human rights abuses and corruption in their own countries.