In New Claim, Moscow Denies Missile That Brought Down MH17 Came From Russia
By Current Time TV
The Russian military has made a new claim about the downing of a passenger jet over the war zone in eastern Ukraine in 2014, asserting that the missile that brought Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 down was sent to Soviet Ukraine after it was made in 1986 and never returned to Russia.
Defense Ministry officials made the claim at a news conference in Moscow on September 17, in an apparent attempt to discredit the findings of an international investigation that determined the system that fired the missile was brought into Ukraine from Russia before the Boeing 777 was shot down on July 17, 2014, and smuggled back into Russia afterwards.
All 298 passengers and crew were killed when the jet, which was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed in an area held by Russia-backed separatists in the Donetsk region.
The tragedy caused an international outcry and deepened tensions between Moscow and the West following Russia's seizure of Crimea and support for the militants in their fight against Kyiv's forces after pro-European protests pushed Moscow-friendly Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych from power.
The Dutch-led Joint Investigative Team (JIT) also found that the Buk missile came from Russia's 53rd Antiaircraft Missile Brigade and was fired from territory held by the Russia-backed separatists.
Many of the JIT's findings have been corroborated or supported by evidence gathered by journalists and independent investigators, such as the British-based open-source cybersleuthing group Bellingcat.
The Russian Defense Ministry officials claimed that some of the evidence used by the JIT was falsified, citing alleged evidence whose authenticity and accuracy could not immediately be independently assessed.
Citing what they said were newly declassified documents, they asserted that the missile was manufactured in Dolgoprudny, outside Moscow, in 1986 -- five years before the Soviet Union fell apart.
"In December 1986, it was sent by railway to the 223rd Air-Defense Missile Brigade" in the Ternopil region of western Ukraine, said Nikolai Parshin, chief of the Defense Ministry's missile and artillery department. "The missile belongs to the Ukrainian armed forces and never returned to Russian territory."
The Russian claim is highly likely to be disputed by many in the West.
It follows several other attempts by Russia to lay blame for the downing of MH17 on Ukraine, including initial suggestions -- now discredited -- that the jet was shot down by a Ukrainian warplane.
The 298 victims of the crash are among more than 10,300 people killed since April 2014 in the war in eastern Ukraine, where fighting persists and the Moscow-backed militants continue to hold parts of the Donestk and Luhansk provinces despite internationally-backed cease-fire and political-settlement deals known as the Minsk Accords.
With reporting by RFE/RL's Russian Service and Meduza
Transcript of RFE/RL's Russian Service interview with Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins:
Mark Krotov: What is your first impression of today's briefing? We can divide it into three parts, I think: The first part is about rocket numbers and other numbers, the second part is about videos, and the third part is about an audio record.
Eliot Higgins: Well, I think one thing we have to keep in mind is that the Russian Ministry of Defense has a long and well established track record of lying and faking evidence. So, first of all, we cannot even really consider this as reliable evidence. I mean, for all we know they just created it for their press conference. So, really, there is absolutely no way to know that this information is genuine. It is coming from people who have fabricated evidence in the past. So, there would need to be some kind of independent confirmation of this. Hopefully the [Netherlands-based] Joint Investigation Team will make some kind of statement about this to clarify what they know about it. But, I mean there is absolutely absolutely no way to know if these records are genuine or not.
Krotov: As for videos, you -- Bellingcat -- have published a lot of videos. Also, those videos which were shown today also can be found on the Bellingcat website and Bellingcat investigations. So, what is wrong with these statements that they are faked?
Higgins: Well I mean, one thing that is interesting to me is the line of perspective theory they have. It's been something that conspiracy theories websites have been pushing for quite a long time. But anyone who has looked at it seriously just said it is nonsense. One of the videos where they are saying that part of the truck should not be white, that is purposely misleading, because the part of it.... Basically what happens is the truck passes through a shadow and part of the roof becomes dark and the other part stays white. But the part of the roof that becomes dark was actually black and was reflecting some light, so it looks white, so the shadow just stops the sunlight being reflected on it. So that is purposely misleading. Another example is they use a video animation the Joint Investigation Team created showing the route of the missile launcher to claim a photograph of the missile launcher shows it moving in the wrong direction. But this was actually an error that was in the original Joint Investigation Team video of the route. The place, they basically placed the photograph is in the wrong location, but the actual real location of the photograph shows it would be moving in the correct direction. So, it is basically a combination of misleading information -- just lying about the content. So, again, it is just them misrepresenting information and lying.
Krotov: And what about the third part, the third evidence -- this audio record?
Higgins: Well, again, there is no independent way to verify this. For all we know, it's a bunch of Russian actors pretending to be this, or, you know, out-of-context discussions with absolutely no way to know if the recording is genuine or not. And as I said before, the Russian Ministry of Defense has a long track record of presenting fake and manipulated information. There are examples of them in press conferences doing that, so there is zero reason to trust in anything they are presenting in a press conference.