The father of a 17-year-old passenger aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 wrote a heartbreaking public letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Thank you very much, Mr. Putin, separatist leaders and Ukrainian government! For murdering my sweet and only child," Hans de Borst starts his letter, published on his Facebook page and in the Hart Van Nederland newspaper on Monday.
De Borst's daughter, Elsemiek, was one of 298 passengers aboard the Malaysia Airlines flight that was brought down over eastern Ukraine Thursday on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. The girl was traveling to Malaysia with her brother, mother and stepfather.
"Gentlemen, I hope you are proud to have shot her young life in pieces, and I hope you can look at yourselves in the mirror tomorrow!," De Borst writes, according to a HuffPost translation from Dutch.
The grief-stricken father concludes with a personal message for Vladimir Putin. "Mr. Putin: I hope your intense conversation with our Prime Minster Rutte opened your eyes!! I know you were struck by it and I'd find it brave if you'd take the initiative to have the crash site guarded by Russian soldiers in order for Dutch experts to investigate everything properly."
A majority of the passengers aboard the downed Malaysia Airlines flight were Dutch. Mark Rutte, the Dutch Prime Minister, said on Monday that the bodies of the victims will be brought to the Netherlands, where they will be identified.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated the direction of the flight. The plane was traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.