Editor’s note: July 17, 2014 was the day Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board and setting off an international investigation that eventually concluded that the missile that destroyed the aircraft was supplied by Russia to separtists in Donetsk. Here we reprint some of our coverage from the first days after the tragedy.
Ukrainian security service spokesman Andrei
Lysenko said on July 28 that data recorders recovered from Malaysia
Airlines flight 17 show the jetliner was downed after being struck by shrapnel from
a missile that caused a “massive, explosive decompression.”
Meanwhile, United Nations Human Rights
Chief Navi Pillay said the downing of the jetliner in eastern Ukraine may
constitute a “war crime,” and international police abandoned a second attempt
to visit the crash site north of the city of Torez amid ongoing fighting between
government forces and Russian-backed rebels.
The plane’s recorders, commonly known as ‘black boxes’, have been sent to experts in the United Kingdom to be examined,
and further information extracted from them is expected to be released soon.
All 298 people on board the Boeing 777-200
jet that was on route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam were killed when it was
purportedly shot out of the sky by an advanced surface-to-air rocket. Ukraine
and the West believe it was downed by a Buk missile system smuggled across the
border from Russia and operated by Kremlin-backed fighters in war-torn Donetsk
Oblast.
Amateur photographs and video footage
published on the internet in the hours before and after the plane was downed
on July 17 show rebels transporting a Buk missile system in the region where
the plane’s wreckage came to rest, before apparently driving it across the
border.
For their part, the Kremlin-backed fighters have
denied responsibility for downing the plane, saying that Ukrainian fighter jets
shot down the airliner. Russia has decried accusations from the West that it
has armed the fighters with such weapons.
The downing of the plane, “given the
prevailing circumstances, may amount to a war crime,” the UN report released on
July 28 quoted Pillay as saying. “Every effort will be made to ensure that
anyone committing serious violations of international law including war crimes
will be brought to justice, no matter who they are.”
The worsening security situation in Ukraine’s restive east has hampered the investigation into the plane’s downing. In particular, rebels have allowed experts only limited access to the site, which is inside territory they have occupied since April.
In a message posted on Twitter, the Organization for Security and Cooperation’s Special Monitoring Mission wrote on July 28 that “due to security reasons SMM was unable to reach MH17 crash site today along [with] Australian and Dutch experts. Convoy has returned to Donetsk.”
Reuters reported rebel leader Vladimir Antyufeyev as saying that his fighters escorting the group of experts to the site encountered fighting and were forced to turn back to Donetsk.
Australian and Dutch experts were set to travel with the group of international monitors.
Government forces continue their advance towards Donetsk
Meanwhile, Ukrainian government forces have
been mounting a major assault against rebel-held positions in eastern Ukraine,
advancing on the area surrounding the MH17 crash site in preparation for a final offensive against insurgents occupying the
regional capital of Donetsk.
While Kyiv claims the latest push will clear the area around the crash
site and facilitate the arrival of international investigative teams, the
international community has expressed concern that the hostilities may compromise
the integrity of the evidence and only hamper efforts to conduct an impartial
examination of the territory.
Security Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko reported on July 28 that Ukrainian
troops had entered Torez and Shakhtarsk, towns formerly under rebel control, and
that fighting was in progress around the villages of Pervomaisk and Snizhe,
located close to where the surface-to-air missile that hit flight MH17 is
believed to have been launched.
The army’s offensive to recapture the strategic point of Horlivka
entered its second day on July 28. Regaining the city of 300,000 from rebel
control will constitute a strategic victory and pave the way for a final
advance towards Donetsk, located 25 miles south of Horlivka, Lysenko said.
In the push to encircle Donetsk and cut off rebel-held territory in Luhank
oblast, dozens of civilians have been killed, including at least 13 in
Horlivka. Both sides have blamed each other after rockets fired at a
residential area within the city claimed the lives of a mother and infant.
In her UN report, Pillay said that as many as 1,129 civilians have been killed and 3,442 wounded since the violence in eastern Ukraine began in mid-April.
“Based on the best data available, conservative estimates by the Human Rights Mission and the World Health Organization put the number of those who have been killed from mid-April to July 15 as 1,000 people. As of July 26, at least 1,129 people have been killed and 3,442 wounded,” according to her report, which covers the period of June 8 to July 15.
Human Rights Watch also reported about rising civilian deaths in a report released on July 24. It said, “unguided Grad rockets launched apparently by Ukrainian government forces and pro-government militias have killed at least 16 civilians and wounded many more in insurgent-controlled areas of Donetsk and its suburbs in at least four attacks between July 12 and 21, 2014.”
“The use of indiscriminate rockets in populated areas violates international humanitarian law, or the laws of war, and may amount to war crimes,” it added.
Kyiv Post editor Christopher J. Miller can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at @ChristopherJM. Kyiv Post staff writer Matthew Luxmoore, who contributed to this report, can be reached at [email protected].
