On Sunday Liz Mayne will make a familiar “pilgrimage” to the Netherlands. In 2015, she flew in to inspect the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, shot down over eastern Ukraine the previous summer. “You could still smell the burning,” she says. “It was an overwhelming experience.”

Her son Richard, a second-year student at Leeds University, was one of 298 people on board. Ten were Britons. All perished. Richard was 20. His body was recovered intact from sunflower fields near the village of Hrabove. He was returned in the clothes he had set off in: sweatshirt and socks bearing the logo of his favourite rugby team, the Leicester Tigers.

Since that first grim trip to see the debris, Liz has returned each year. In 2018 she and her husband, Simon, were shown poignant CCTV images of Richard, taken at Schiphol airport. On 17 July 2014, she had driven him from their home in Leicester to Birmingham; he gave her a “cheeky” wave before boarding a connecting flight to Amsterdam.

The footage shows him walking towards gate eight – on his way to Australia. He goes into a tunnel and then vanishes. Seeing him alive again was both sad and magical, Liz recalls. “He is on his way to this wonderful experience. I see that as something to celebrate. He’s not thinking: ‘I am walking to my death.’ He’s thinking: ‘The world is my oyster’.”

The wheels of justice have turned slowly. For Liz and other relatives seeking to understand why their loved ones were killed, it has been a long and painful process, threaded with grief and frustration. Their agony not helped by the fact that Russia – the state investigators allege is most responsible for the disaster – continues to deny its guilt.

Richard Mayne.

On Monday Liz will watch the start of a trial of four suspects whom Dutch authorities say were responsible for downing the Boeing 777 with a Russian anti-aircraft missile while it was on its way to Kuala Lumpur. The trial is to take place in a judicial complex in Schiphol. Twenty next of kin chosen by ballot will sit in courtroom D; Mayne will watch on a video feed from a conference centre in Utrecht.

It will be an international affair – not surprising given that two-thirds of the passengers were Dutch, and the others came from Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the UK, Germany, Belgium, the Philippines, Canada and New Zealand. Four hundred journalists from around the world are expected to attend. Some of the British families may drop out because of fears over the coronavirus.

The first week is expected to deal with “housekeeping” issues rather than hearing evidence. It will include the crucial detail of whether the suspects – who are each charged with murdering all 298 passengers and crew, and with bringing a missile launcher into eastern Ukraine – will turn up. One is known to have appointed a lawyer but, since neither Russia nor Ukraine extradites its nationals, it is almost certain they will be tried in absentia.

Three are Russians – Igor Girkin, a former colonel of Russia’s FSB spy service; Sergei Dubinsky, employed by Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency; and Oleg Pulatov, a former soldier with the GRU’s Spetsnaz special forces unit. A fourth is a Ukrainian citizen, Leonid Kharchenko. All were senior commanders in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR). In summer 2014, the separatist militia, helped and armed by Moscow, was embroiled in a bloody war with Ukrainian forces. Russia boosted the DNR’s efforts with undercover soldiers.

According to the prosecution, the defendants asked Russia’s defence ministry for heavy weapons, and it agreed. A convoy was allegedly sent from the 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade, based in the Russian city of Kursk. It included the Buk missile launcher used to bring down MH17.

A tragic mistake? Or a deliberate act? This is something relatives hope the public sessions will establish.

For more than five years the Kremlin has denied all involvement. In contrast to authorities in Iran, which in January said their military had shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane in error, President Vladimir Putin has batted away accusations of responsibility. Russian state TV has broadcast conspiracy theories: the Ukrainians fired on the plane, mistaking it for Putin’s jet; it was already full of dead bodies; the US was to blame.

Despite these counterclaims, the evidence against Moscow has piled up. The investigative website Bellingcat found photographs of Russian soldiers who travelled with the convoy. Locals filmed the Buk as it headed back to the Russian border, minus one missile. Girkin boasted that the rebels had shot down another “bird”, before deleting his post.

Bellingcat’s founder, Eliot Higgins, thinks prosecutors will reveal additional evidence. He believes the Dutch-led joint investigation team has obtained further videos and photographs, and may have an image of the missile being fired. There are likely to be recorded calls between the indicted DNR operatives and their Russian army handlers, plus a possible witness who travelled with the Buk on its deadly journey.

Relatives attend a ceremony in memory of the victims, in the Netherlands, on the fifth anniversary of the their deaths. Photograph: Frank van Beek/Reuters

The trial will last many months . It’s unclear if more will follow. Possible future defendants include the four Russian soldiers and a captain who crewed the anti-aircraft system – assuming they are still alive – as well as senior members of Moscow’s general staff. “There’s been a total Russian disinformation campaign. Getting some hard truths in a court of law is what’s needed,” Richard’s brother, Will – now 24 – says.

Will is scathing about the suspects, who are believed to be hiding in Russia and rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine. “These individuals are egotistical enough to take up arms and to kill other human beings. But when a tragedy like this happens in a theatre of war, nobody is man enough to own up,” he says. Getting justice will be a “long road”, he admits, and may not happen in his parents’ lifetime.

Richard’s father, Simon, says Monday’s court session is the beginning of a process that – like the investigation into Lockerbie – could last 30 years. He points out that the political state of Russia a decade in the future is unknowable: “It is important to establish the facts now. The trial will reveal the chain of command right back to the Kremlin. That may one day become important.”

Simon also blames Ukraine, which in the months before the tragedy failed to close its airspace, even after its military transports were targeted. “Cynically, one could say that it suited them very well to have MH17 downed. The spotlight went on the Russians, sanctions were tightened, the rebellion in the east was temporarily halted,” he says. He adds that the EU needs to explain why it allowed flights to go on “such a perilous path”.

Though the court process is welcome, relatives of the victims say that – almost six years on – they are still struggling to cope. Liz Mayne calls her desire to watch the proceedings close-up a “compulsion”. She has written a victim impact statement that will be entered into the official record. It is a harrowing document: a moving and brutal account of how Richard’s death has “completely broken” her family.

“I get quite intolerant at people moaning about little things,” she says. “I’m lacking in sympathy and empathy It’s been eroded. It’s like this dislocation from people. It’s almost as if I’m on another planet, really. I don’t know what to do about it.” She says she knows others don’t want to hear a “narrative of tragedy” but at the same time feels unable to move on.

Richard’s three siblings have adopted different survival strategies, she adds. The oldest, Tom, now 30, largely avoids the subject; Will has been the most vocal; while his younger sister, Francesca, who is 22, has struggled. “She’s frozen, not able to process it,” Liz says. “When I asked her what we should do, if we were to have a magic wand, she replied: ‘Just bring Richard back’.”