A steady drip, drip of leaked information from investigators, along with other reports, has over the past year accumulated into a vast pool of damning evidence that Russia was responsible for the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in Ukraine on July 17, 2014.
The bulk of the eyewitness testimony, open-source intelligence and leaks from investigators all point to one conclusion: the plane was shot down by a Russian Buk surface-to-air missile from territory controlled by Kremlin-backed separatists.
The investigation into how the civilian plane crashed, however, is only expected to be released in October by the Dutch Safety Board.
All 298 people on board the airliner were killed. More than half of them, 193, were from the Netherlands, while Malaysia lost 43 citizens, and Australia 27.
Mourners place flowers and light candles in front of the Netherlands Embassy in Kyiv on July 18, 2014, a day after all 298 people on board Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 were killed when the aircraft was shot down over Russian-occupied Donetsk Oblast. (Pavlo Podufalov)
Efforts to establish who was responsible for shooting down the plane have not been confined to the official authorities of these countries. Citizen journalists have scoured the Internet for relevant information. This evidence, when combined with official sources and those dug up by journalists, has yielded a remarkably detailed account of the tragedy’s circumstances.
According to photo, video and text evidence collected by Bellingcat, a British open-source intelligence outfit, a convoy containing the Buk M-1 missile system that later shot down the Boeing left the 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade base in the Russian city of Kursk on June 23. It reached the city of Millerovo in Rostov Oblast close to the Ukrainian border on June 25.
Last July the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) published what it said was an intercepted call between Kremlin-backed separatists in which they confirm that the Buk missile system with a crew had crossed the border into Ukraine on July 17.
Alexander Khodakovsky, commander of the Moscow-backed Vostok battalion, confirmed on July 23, 2014 in an interview with Reuters that Kremlin-backed forces had received a Buk missile system. But he later backtracked on his claim, telling the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper that he couldn’t be sure the Russian-separatists had a Buk system.
The Dutch-led joint investigation team said in March that, according to one of the scenarios it was considering, the Buk missile that shot down the plane moved from the separatist-controlled town of Severny in Ukraine, which is less than one kilometer from the Russian border, to Luhansk on July 17. The team comprises investigators appointed by the Australian, Belgian, Malaysian, Dutch and Ukrainian authorities.
On the day of the shootdown, July 17, the Buk moved through the cities of Donetsk, Zuhres, Shakhtarsk and Torez to Snizhne in Donetsk Oblast, according to both video and photo evidence collected by Bellingcat and one of the versions of events being considered by the joint investigation team. The missile that shot down the plane was launched from an area south of Snizhne, according to Bellingcat, and the debris from the destroyed aircraft fell to the ground near the village of Hrabove northwest of Snizhne.
Immediately after the crash, Russian separatist Igor Strelkov’s Bulletin, a major separatist account on Russia’s Vkontakte social network, said that Kremlin-backed forces had shot down a Ukrainian An-26 transport plane. The entry was swiftly deleted.
Since no such plane was shot down, analysts concluded that separatists had apparently mistaken the Malaysian Airlines plane for an An-26.
The same Buk system that shot down the plane was transported to Luhansk closer to the Russian border and was filmed there on July 18, according to the joint investigation team and Bellingcat. On the same day, the Buk crossed the border with Russia, according to an intercepted call between Kremlin-backed militants released by the joint investigation team in March.
Subsequently a convoy with missile loaders was filmed in Russia’s Belgorod Oblast on July 19-20. It contained at least one missile loader from the June convoy that transported the Buk to the Ukrainian border, Bellingcat concluded.
The movement of the sophisticated missile system from Donetsk to Snizhne to Luhansk was also confirmed by an intercepted conversation published by the SBU last July and eyewitnesses interviewed by De Volksrant, a Dutch newspaper, in May and Russia’s Novaya Gazeta in July.
Bellingcat’s founder Eliot Higgins told the Kyiv Post that the Buk missile’s crew was highly likely to be Russian.
“Why would we think that they drove a missile launcher up to the border, handed over the keys to some local farmers in Ukraine who drove it and shot down MH17, especially when it’s a complicated missile system?” he said.
Higgins said that Bellingcat could release the names of the people involved but did not want “to publish anything that damages the police investigation.” The names could, however, be published in August, he said.
According to calls intercepted by the SBU, people involved in the missile system’s transportation include Oleg Bugrov, chief of staff of Luhansk-based separatist forces; and an officer of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) Andrey (second name unknown) with the nom-de-guerre Orion. Other people implicated are Sergei Petrovsky, with the nom-de-guerre Khmury, a GRU officer and a deputy of Igor Girkin, a separatist leader and ex-officer of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB); Buryat, a separatist fighter, and Botsman, a GRU officer, according to the SBU.
And according to an intercepted call published by the joint investigation team, a man with the nom-de-guerre Bibliotekar was also involved. Another person allegedly implicated in the scheme is someone who goes by the nom-de-guerre Gyurza, who has been identified by separatists as a Russian intelligence officer, according to sources cited by Novaya Gazeta in July.
In the face of the evidence provided by the joint investigative team, Western media, Bellingcat and numerous bloggers, Russia has produced a number of conflicting theories that blame Ukraine for the crash. Much of the evidence provided by Russia has since proved to be false by Bellingcat and even some Russian experts.
On July 21, 2014, Russia’s Defense Ministry held a press conference intended to prove that the plane had been shot down by either a Ukrainian Buk missile or a Ukrainian plane.
Bellingcat later conducted an error-level analysis of the images provided by Russia’s Defense Ministry and concluded that they had been falsified.
In November 2014, Russia’s state-controlled Channel One broadcast an image allegedly showing a Ukrainian plane shooting down the Boeing. That image was later proved to be a crude fake.
Then in June 2015, Russian state-owned arms producer Almaz-Antei claimed that at the time of the crash Russia no longer possessed Buk M-1 systems with 9M38M1 missiles. However, Bellingcat later provided numerous recent images of such equipment in Russia.
Another debunked Russian theory is that a Ukrainian Buk missile launched from the village of Zaroshchenske south of Shakhtarsk allegedly shot down the plane.
Last month the Netherlands sent a draft of its report due in October to Malaysia, Ukraine, Russia, the United States, the U.K. and Australia. Russia’s Air Transport Agency said, “we have nothing to hide,”regarding MH17, but has refused to answer questions until the final Dutch report is published.
CNN reported on July 16, citing a source who had seen the report, that it says the plane was shot down by a Russian Buk missile from separatist-controlled territory.
The second report, prepared by the joint investigation team, will identify those responsible for the crash. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said earlier in July that the criminal investigation would continue until the end of 2016.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].
