Five years after flight MH17 was shot down, a group of Ukrainians living in Brabant laid sunflowers and shared hugs on Wednesday evening at the monument next to Eindhoven Airport.
The sunflowers are symbolic, according to Sergiy Bachynskyy, a native Ukrainian who has been living in Best for 18 years. The flight crashed in sunflower fields, which are characteristic of eastern Ukraine’s landscape. “It still hurts. It was war in Ukraine, and you never expect soldiers to shoot a plane out of the sky”.
The grief hits particularly close for Sergiy, who also lost a colleague. His Philips co-worker went on holiday to Malaysia with his family, but never arrived.
Anton Kotte, who started the iniative to build the monument, was also present. Kotte lost his son, daughter-in-law, and six-year-old grandchild in the disaster.
Source: Omroep Brabant
Translation: Nicola W
