In its latest report, Bellingcat -- the open-source citizen investigative team -- pinpoints the Russian brigade that provided and operated the Buk-M1 missile launcher that is believed to have downed Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board.
The airliner was flying from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, when contact was suddenly lost over the war zone in eastern Ukraine. Reports quickly came that parts from the plane had come down in Russian-backed separatist territory, with the aircraft having disintegrated in midair.
The findings could help criminal investigators identify specific individuals responsible for the killings. The names and identities of all soldiers and officers were shared in December with the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team probing the downing of the jet, in an uncensored and more extensive version of the report, Bellingcat said.
The investigation into the downing of the airliner is led by the Dutch Justice Ministry’s Public Prosecution Service. The Joint Investigation Team, which is also taking part in the investigation, is made up of teams from Belgium, Ukraine, Australia, and Malaysia.
Overall, the report’s authors have concluded that the chain of commands leads up to at least Russia’s Ministry of Defense for the MH17 tragedy, along with military commanders of Kremlin-backed separatist forces in Ukraine’s Donbas region.
The document, entitled “MH17 – Potential Suspects and Witnesses from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade,” was released on Feb. 24 at 8 a.m. Kyiv time.
The 53rd Brigade from June 23-25, 2014, transported several Buk-M1 systems to areas near the Ukrainian border, including a missile launcher dubbed by Bellingcat “Buk 3×2” (its number was partly obscured). In earlier reports, Bellingcat provided evidence that this launcher was the one that downed MH17.
The hypothesis that this particular Buk-M1 was likely responsible for downing MH17 included evidence found by Bellingcat that located the launcher in range of MH17 shortly before the airliner was downed, and video of the launcher, minus one of its missiles, being transported through Luhansk towards Russia the morning after the tragedy.
The report notes that there is no univocal evidence that the Buk’s crew consisted of Russian soldiers or officers. However, “Russia would very likely not hand over such a sophisticated weapon to separatists untrained and inexperienced with the Buk-M1 system,” the report says.
According to Bellingcat, the 2nd Battalion of the 53rd Brigade was responsible for transporting Buk 3×2 to the Ukrainian border.
“The missile launcher designated Buk 3×2 replaced a 2nd Battalion missile launcher numbered 222, thus indicating that the officers and soldiers normally responsible for Buk 222 were the most likely candidates to operate its replacement, Buk 3×2,” the report said.
The report also states that since operating a Buk system requires extensive training, conscript soldiers who started their military service in late 2013 or early 2014 were unlikely to have been involved in the tragedy.
“By narrowing down the scope of the search, only a relatively small group of contract soldiers and reservists who were in service in the 2nd Battalion in 2014 remain as potential suspects involved in the downing of MH17,” the report said.
The decision to send military equipment to the Russia-Ukraine border and to Ukraine must have been made at the level of the Ministry of Defense of Russia, where the top positions in 2014 were fulfilled by Vice-Minister Arkady Bakhin, Vice-Minister Valery Gerasimov, and Minister Sergey Shoigu.
Therefore, if Russian Buk missile launcher 3×2 downed MH17, the Ministry of Defense bears the main responsibility for the MH17 tragedy, along with the pro-Russian separatists’ leaders, Bellingcat said in its report. Russian President Vladimir Putin, as Russia’s commander-in-chief, would also bear ultimate responsibility, the report says.
The report is the result of a thorough online investigation of soldiers and officers of the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, Bellingcat said. The connections were made primarily through the soldiers’ profiles on various social networks, such as Russia’s most popular networks Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki, as well as through blogs and another web platforms, where mothers, wives and girlfriends of Russian soldiers shared information about them.
“If the Buk crew consisted of Russian soldiers and officers, it is likely that some number of these soldiers and officers knew the crew members of the Buk missile launcher involved in the MH17 tragedy, or were possibly crew members themselves,” the report states.
Bellingcat did not reveal the full names of the soldiers in the released document, “as it might (disrupt) the official police investigation,” and because “the privacy of these soldiers and officers has to be respected if there is no relation between them and the MH17 tragedy.”
The open-source outfit said it had submitted their names to investigators.
The report consists of five sections, each covering a different aspect of the 53rd Brigade and its activities in the summer of 2014.
The document describes the role and structure of the brigade within the Russian military, provides a detailed account of the deployment of the brigade throughout the summer of 2014, details the soldiers within the 53rd Brigade and the information provided by their public postings on social media, and provides extensive information regarding the leadership structure of the brigade.
Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk can be reached at [email protected]
