Ukrainians React to Iran’s Admission of Guilt in Shooting Down Airliner

KYIV, Ukraine—Ukrainians of all generations know what it’s like to have a war in their homeland.

In World War II, Ukraine was the deadliest battlefield of the deadliest war in human history. And today, just 400 miles southeast of Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv, Ukrainian soldiers remain hunkered down in trenches and improvised forts, facing their sixth straight winter at war against Russian forces in the country’s embattled Donbas region.

Tragedy struck Ukrainians again on the morning of Jan. 8, when a pair of Iranian surface-to-air missiles shot down a Ukrainian airliner outside Tehran, killing all 176 passengers and crew on board. The shoot-down happened only hours after Iran had fired ballistic missiles at bases in Iraq housing U.S. troops.

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