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WATCH: Parents heartbreaking speech about losing their three children in MH17 tragedy

As four men are charged with murder

Heartbreaking footage has emerged showing the parents of three Australian children killed on Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 speaking about their unfathomable loss after the passenger plane was gunned down over eastern Ukraine almost five years ago.

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The emotional video comes as investigators named four suspects they will charge with murder for the downing of the aircraft on July 17, 2014, which killed all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board.

WATCH the tragic speech here: 

Perth couple Anthony Maslin and Marite ‘Rin’ Norris lost their children Mo, 12, Evie, 10 and Otis, eight, and the kids’ grandfather Nick when they were travelling home to Australia from the Netherlands.

“Our world as we knew it was absolutely over in that moment and we just started to say, ‘when the world ended’ – and that’s how we refer to it now,” Ms Norris told ABC’s Australian Story earlier this month.

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In May 2016, Anthony and Marite welcomed a daughter, Violet, who they called “a tiny glimmer of hope that our life might not be continuously and forever just loss”.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down by pro-Russia separatists over Hrabove in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014.

mh17 crash site
Ukrainian rescue servicemen inspect the wreckage of MH17 on July 20, 2014 (Credit: Getty Images)

Thirty-eight Australians – including a Catholic nun, a teacher, a husband and wife who were both doctors, a real estate agent, the Maslin children and their grandfather Nick – lost their lives in the tragedy, ABC News reported at the time.

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The Dutch-led Joint Investigations Team (JIT) named three Russians – Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky and Oleg Poelatov – and Ukrainian national Leonid Kharchenko as responsible for the tragedy, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

The men will be prosecuted in the Hague in a trial scheduled to start on March 9, 2020.

WATCH this video for details on the charges and upcoming trial:

“We now have the information and proof that the Russian Federation is involved in this tragedy, in this crime,” Dutch chief prosecutor and JIT coordinator Fred Westerbeke said at a MH17 press conference in Nieuwegein, Netherlands.

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Last year, the JIT – which worked in collaboration with the Australian Federal Police – confirmed flight MH17 had been gunned down by a Russian army BUK -M1 missile, which was brought to a field in Pervomaisky, eastern Ukraine from a military base in south western Russia.

All three Russians have formal military backgrounds, while Mr Kharchenko of the Ukraine was the leader of a separatist group at the time of the incident.

International arrest warrants have been issued for the men, but none of the four can be extradited per Russian and Ukrainian law which does not permit extradition for criminal trials.

Investigators said the four will be tried in absentia.

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australians at mh17 crash site
Australians Angela Rudhart-Dyczynski and Jerzy Dyczynski arrive at the crash site where their daughter Fatima, 25, was killed in Hrabove, Ukraine in July 2014 (Credit: Getty Images)

Ukraine’s prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko said the country would try to arrest Kharchenko and, if successful, “fulfill the court sentence” the Sydney Morning Heraldreports.

Russian, meanwhile, has vehemently denied any involvement.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Marise Payne issued a statement on the charges, saying: “The downing of MH17 was a despicable act and the Australian Government has not stopped in the pursuit of justice for the 298 victims, including 38 Australians.”

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