Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down on July 17, 2014 by a missile fired by Buk 332 of Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade.
This fact, and many of the other facts of the shoot-down the ill-fated passenger plane, emerged soon after the wreckage of the plane, and the bodies of the 298 people who had been on board, dropped out of the skies in the Russian-occupied part of Donetsk Oblast.
Now, on the third anniversary of the tragedy on July 17, open-source investigation team Bellingcat has issued a 73-page report on MH17 that summarizes the evidence of who was responsible for the mass murder of MH17’s passengers and crew, a well as showing how Russia has attempted to muddy the case with misinformation.
The report documents the route the convoy including Buk 332 took from Russia’s Kursk on June 23, 2014 towards the Russia-Ukraine border, with the convoy last seen in Millerovo, Russia on June 25. “This Buk, which was first dubbed ‘Buk 3×2’ due to an obscured digit on the side of the chassis, has many similarities with the one seen in Ukraine on July 17,” the report reads.
According to the report, Buk 332 arrived in Donetsk in the morning of July 17, 2014. For six hours before the downing of MH17, Ukrainians went online to discuss a Buk missile launcher slowly creeping through eastern Ukraine. Just after Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 left Amsterdam, this weapon was filmed heading south out of the Ukrainian, separatist-controlled town of Snizhne. From there, while loaded onto a red low-loader, the Buk traveled eastwards through separatist-controlled territory, and eventually reached the town of Snizhne in the early afternoon.
While loaded on the low-loader, the Buk traveled eastwards through Russian-occupied territory, and eventually reached the town of Snizhne in the early afternoon. “The Buk was hauled by a Volvo truck and accompanied by three vehicles operated by DNR forces: a dark-blue Volkswagen van, a Toyota RAV4 SUV, and a UAZ- 469 jeep,” the report reads. “These three vehicles were a part of a convoy on July 15 (two days before the downing) on roughly the same route that the Buk traveled on in eastern Ukraine.”
After arriving in Snizhne, Buk 332 was unloaded and drove under its own power southward, out of town until it arrived at a field south of Snizhne and fired a missile that resulted in the destruction of flight MH17.
The Bellingcat team spent nearly one-and-a-half years investigating Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, whose Buk downed MH17 in Ukraine. “With over 200 soldiers’ social media profiles identified, it has been possible to confirm the identity and roles of many members of the 53rd Brigade and their involvement in the June 23-25 convoy that transported Buk 332 to the Russia-Ukraine border,” the report reads.
The team has also identified one of the potential suspects – Sergey “Khmury” Dubinsky, a veteran of the Russian Armed Forces who served as the head of intelligence for Igor “Strelkov” Girkin’s separatist forces in 2014. Through intercepted phone calls, the report says, it is clear that Dubinsky is one of the key figures in the procurement and transport of the Buk missile launcher that downed MH17. He tells the separatist soldiers where to take the Buk and which fighters should be in the convoy with it.
In a video obtained by News Corps Australia in 2015 shot by Russian-backed fighters themselves, shows them examining the site of the plane wreckage, which they initially thought was of a Ukrainian fighter jet. The video records their dismay as they minutes later they discover the personal belongings of the passengers and realize that the aircraft was a commercial airliner.
The video by News Corps Australia shows the site of the MH17 crash.
“Who’s opened a corridor for them to fly over here?” one of the fighters asks on the video.
A day before the tragedy, Russia banned all civil aviation flights from its airspace adjacent to Ukraine at an altitude of 16,150 meters and below, an altitude that corresponds to the Buk missile system’s maximum firing range. It was much higher that Ukrainian airspace restriction, which was set at 9,754 meters for civilian aviation, reads the 2015 Dutch Safety Board report.
In response to Dutch inquiries, Russia said that it closed its airspace in order to coordinate with the restrictions imposed by Ukraine earlier, but failed to comment on the mismatch between the altitudes.
Read the full Bellingcat report here.
