RT, formerly Russia Today, is a Russian state-controlled propaganda outlet masquerading as an international news channel. In recent days, a new RT story appeared regarding the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, in which 298 innocent civilians were killed.
Last week the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) responsible for investigating the cause of the crash released its second report, and the RT piece in question, entitled “Int’l investigators allowed Ukraine to fabricate MH17 evidence – Russia” presents the response of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to this new JIT report, extensively quoting the ministry’s spokesperson, Maria Zakharova.
In addition, the RT story later brings in another talking head, in a failed attempt to add credibility to their desperate narrative.
“Russia suggested working together from the start and relying on the facts only,” Zakharova says, and this is partly true – I remember a very nervous looking Russian President Vladimir Putin making this pledge on the night MH17 was shot down, in a very rare late night TV appearance. But the obvious opening question here is, “Why?” What gives Russia any jurisdiction or any discernible reason for being a party to the investigation? On the face of it, Russia has absolutely no reason to be involved, IF they had nothing to do with what happened to MH17. We’ll gloss over Zakharova’s abuse of the word “facts,” for now.
She goes on to declare that “Instead of (working together), international investigators suspended Moscow from comprehensive participation in the investigative process, allowing our efforts only a minor role. It sounds like a bad joke, but at the same time they made Ukraine a full member of the JIT (Joint Investigation Team), giving it the opportunity to forge evidence and turn the case to its advantage.”
Let’s break that down…
First, according to international protocol the responsibility for conducting an air crash investigation falls upon the country where the air crash occurred – in this case, Ukraine. That country may choose to invite representatives of other countries, such as the country where the aircraft is manufactured or operated from, or countries who lost citizens in the crash. So Russia doesn’t qualify, at all, to participate in this investigation.
Second, the reason why Ukraine was a full member of the JIT is established above. But, in fact, Ukraine had every right to take the position of the primary investigating authority in this case. However, the country willingly transferred leadership of the investigation to the Netherlands, as the country that had suffered the greatest loss of life.
Lastly, the assertion that Ukraine had the “opportunity to forge evidence and turn the case to its advantage” is preposterous. Here we have the spokesperson for the Russian Ministry, and RT, expecting people to believe that the other parties to the International Investigation team, representatives of police and judicial authorities from The Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, and Malaysia; have been fooled by some dodgy evidence planted by Ukraine? That theory is so weak a child could see through it, and it is an insult to the people whose professionalism keeps us all a bit safer every time they find the cause of a plane crash and make damned sure that the same circumstances never down another aircraft.
The ONLY alternative to the above, that the investigating authorities of four respectable nations are incompetent and missed Ukraine’s “forged evidence” is that those four respectable nations are actually part of some sort of cover up and complicit in pinning the blame, unfairly, on Russia. If you are a citizen of one of those four developed and law abiding nations, you too should take offence at the shocking accusations of the Russian government against your state.
(It should be noted that no specific claim is made regarding any forgery, of course – just the accusation of forgery appears to be enough for Zakharova, and for RT and their readers, and no details need be provided.)
“To this day, the investigators continue to ignore the overwhelming evidence provided by the Russian side, despite the fact that Russia is the only side that submits accurate information and constantly discloses new data,” Zakharova said.
In reality, none of that is true. The investigators have looked in great detail at the various alternative theories proffered by Russia (note, no other party has ever offered an alternative theory, that in itself says a lot) and each of these theories, after due consideration, has been dismissed by the investigation team as not supported by the facts. The Russian Ministry of Defense theory about a Ukrainian jet fighter being responsible, put forward with a poorly photoshopped image which was not to scale, was dismissed by the JIT, and, ironically, has now been contradicted by Russia’s own latest claims.
Russia hasn’t provided “overwhelming evidence” for anything – they’ve repeatedly put forward lies that have repeatedly been debunked. Russia does not submit “accurate information” – their aim since day one has been to flood the information space with a multitude of stories so that the less informed or less intelligent, like Donald Trump, can conclude “I mean, to be honest with you, you’ll probably never know for sure.”
“Russia is disappointed that the situation surrounding the investigation into the Boeing crash is not changing,” Zakharova said. “The findings of the Dutch prosecutor’s office confirm that the investigation is biased and politically motivated. To arbitrarily designate a guilty party and dream up the desired results has become the norm for our Western colleagues.”
Zakharova gets one thing right here: the situation surrounding the investigation is not changing, because facts are stubborn things. What she gets completely wrong: the investigation is neither biased nor politically motivated. The guilty party has not been deduced in an arbitrary way, the JIT is quite clear, the investigators believe beyond any reasonable doubt that MH17 was hit by a missile fired from territory controlled by Russia’s proxies in eastern Ukraine, and that the BUK had arrived from Russia and was shipped back across the border to Russia the following day.
There’s nothing arbitrary in this. The results weren’t dreamed up – they are based on the trail of evidence which came from multiple witnesses and has been tested many times over by a multitude of independent media outlets, and the announcement from the JIT was, in reality, little more than a formality, although an important one. We already knew what happened – this was the official confirmation.
Case closed, that’s it. All that’s needed now is to identify the actual culprits. Who gave the order to send a Russian BUK into Ukraine, who was the crew who operated that BUK? But, not according to RT, who then bring in commentary to their story from Joaquim Flores.
“The very problem with the JIT from its genesis was that it was put together by NATO as a result of a failure to actually create a truly independent inquiry team, which was rejected at the level of the UN Security Council once it became clear the point of any investigation was going to be to determine how it was that the Russian Federation was responsible, instead of looking at the first question, ‘Who did it?’” Flores said.
“So, that was the problem from the very start. It was a geopolitically motivated investigation and it was flawed,” he went on.
But the JIT was not “put together by NATO” at all. The inquiry team was indeed independent. The first call, at the United Nations Security Council level, for there to be an independent inquiry into the downing of MH17 was approved by all members, including Russia, on July 21, 2014. This was one part of Resolution 2166. A follow up UN Security Council resolution, specifically regarding an international investigation and tribunal, was vetoed at the UN Security Council level – by Russia. Mr. Flores omits this very important fact when he talks about calls for an investigation failing at the UN Security Council level.
We return to the opening question: “Have they no shame?”
No, it appears they do not.
Two hundred and ninety-eight innocent people were killed, and the Kremlin’s lies, denials and distortion of the facts continue. Moscow’s maligning of the competence, independence and professionalism of the investigating team adds another layer of insult to the memories of those who were killed by a BUK missile that we now know, beyond reasonable doubt, came from Russia.
