More than 1,000 relatives of the victims of the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 are expected to attend a memorial service marking the 10th anniversary of the disaster.

King Willem-Alexander and prime minister Dick Schoof will attend the ceremony at Vijfhuizen, near Schiphol, along with representatives of the governments of Malaysia, Australia, Ukraine, Belgium and the UK.

The names of the 298 victims, 196 of whom were Dutch, will be read out and a two-minute silence observed. The ceremony is being broadcast live on NPO1 from 1.40pm.

A permanent memorial to the victims of a steel eye surrounded by a ribbon wood of 298 trees was unveiled at Vijfhuizen in 2017, on the third anniversary of the disaster.

Flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine by a Buk missile fired by Russian-back militia fighters as it was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

It prompted prime minister Mark Rutte to declare the first national day of mourning in the country’s history. The remains of the victims were flown to the Netherlands in military aircraft and transported to a military base near Hilversum in a procession of hearses along the motorway.

Joint investigation team

Five countries, led by the Netherlands, set up a Joint Investigation Team which traced the missile to a unit of the Russian army based in Kursk.

Three military commanders from the self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic were tried in absentia by a Dutch court and sentenced to life in prison for mass murder. A fourth defendant was acquitted.

None of the men has served a day in prison for the crime, though Igor Girkin, the former leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic, has since been jailed in Russian for “inciting extremism” during the subsequent invasion of Ukraine.

Moscow vetoed an attempt to set up a United Nations tribunal and has fuelled various contradictory conspiracy theories suggesting the plane was brought down by a fighter jet or a bomb on board – explanations that were discredited by the JIT and the Dutch Safety Board in 2014.

Sander de Lang, a lawyer who has represented victims’ families since the first weeks after the crash, said Russia’s persistent refusal to accept any responsibility remains a running sore.

“The fact that the Russians are still denying everything is a poke in the eye for the families. They can only shut the book for good once Russia is held to account,” he told Trouw.

Loes van Heijnigen, who lost her brother-in-law Erik, sister-in-law Tina and nephew Zeger, said the 10th anniversary had stirred up deep-seated feelings of loss and grief. “It all comes back: the pain, the sorrow, the wound that opens up again,” she told EenVandaag.

“Zeger was 17 when he was on board the plane. He should have been 27 now. What would have become of him? What would he have chosen to study? You don’t know.”