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Four fugitive suspects go on trial in the Netherlands today charged with the murder of 298 passengers and crew aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, shot down with a Russian-made missile over eastern Ukraine in July 2014.

Wreckage of the Boeing 777 fell into fields in territory held by pro-Russian separatists fighting Ukrainian government forces.

It was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was hit by a surface-to-air missile. There were no survivors.

Arrest warrants were issued last year for three Russians and a Ukrainian identified by a Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team that spent several years collecting evidence.

The four - Russians Sergey Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov and Igor Girkin and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko - had senior positions in pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The investigators said they had not pulled the trigger but colluded in the attack.

Girkin, a Russian nationalist, was minister of defense in the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic in Ukraine. Dubinsky, Pulatov and Kharchenko were part of the separatists' military intelligence unit.

The defendants are at large and not expected to show for the hearings at a high-security courtroom near Amsterdam's Schiphol airport to be prosecuted under Dutch law.

The judges could rule the trial be held in absentia.

They also face allegations of obtaining a missile launcher with the intent to bring down an aircraft.

Russia has denied involvement or providing financial or military support to rebels in Ukraine.<

Trial opens on downed plane