© AP Photo/ Peter Dejong
Today the Joint Investigation Team released their findings on the shoot-down of MH17. This follows the October 2015 Dutch Safety Board report, which concluded that the plane was shot down with a Buk missile armed with a 9N314M warhead, and stressed that Ukraine had failed to close the airspace over the war zone. However,
the Russian company that produces the Buk system conducted their own tests, allegedly ruling out the separatist-held village of Snezhnoye as the launch site, pointing to Kiev-held Zaroshchenskoye as the only possible site, and questioning the type of warhead identified by the DSB based on the physical damage to the wreckage. (See:
Closing the BUK on MH17? Dutch final report is clearly biased.)
Initially, on July 21, 2014,
Russia released data showing that a Ukrainian jet was in the vicinity of MH17 before it was shot down. This matched up with eyewitness accounts and analysis of the
damage suggesting the possibility of fighter jet machine-gun fire. However, just two days ago, Russia released some "newly discovered" civilian radar data alleging to show the situation in the air at the time of the shoot-down and crash. The data
showed three civilian aircraft in the vicinity, but "no foreign objects near the Malaysian plane which could have caused its destruction". So this latest release contradicts their earlier statements:
the radar shows no indication of a fighter jet in the air.According to the Russian experts, due to the capacities of the radar station involved, the data suggests that a Buk was not fired from rebel-held territory, but the same could not be said for the territory held by Kiev, because the radar station wouldn't have been able to detect a missile fired from Zaroshchenskoye. (The author of the
What Happened to Flight MH17 blog argues the opposite - that the radar would have detected a missile fired from Zaroshchenskoye more easily, but without a detailed expert analysis, it's hard to say either way.) According to the Russians, Ukraine has yet to release their radar data, and the investigation is proceeding based on false premises,
namely the misidentification of the type of missile used.
Comment: If what he asserts is true, and he was on the side of the separatists, then he would have indeed been protecting civilians. The actual terrorists are the Ukrainian forces, who are guilty of human rights crimes as noted in this UN report, and those that support them.