This article was collaboratively researched and written by the Bellingcat MH17 Investigation Team.
On July 18, 2014, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) published several tapped telephone conversations in relation to the July 17 downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17). Most of these conversations, recorded on the day of the downing, are between an officer identified as ‘Khmuryi’ (’Gloomy’ or ‘Grumpy’) and other separatist officers or soldiers of separatist-held territories in Donetsk oblast. The SBU identified ‘Khmuryi’ as ‘Sergey Nikolaevich Petrovsky’, a Russian GRU officer, but it took some time before this was covered in-depth by either Western or Russian-language media.
