Time: How Russia has obscured the facts in the MH17 investigation

By Time.

Published Sept. 29, 2016 at 5:10 pm

(FILES) This file photo taken on July 20, 2014 shows a piece of the wreckage of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 lying in a field near the village of Grabove, in the region of Donetsk. The missile which brought down Flight MH17 two years ago over eastern Ukraine was transported into the area from Russia, a Dutch-led investigation found on September 28, 2016."Based on the criminal investigation we have concluded that flight MH17 was downed by a BUK missile of the series 9M83, that came from the territory of the Russian Federation," the head of the Dutch police investigation Wilbert Pualissen said, adding afterwards the missile launcher system "was taken back to Russia."

Photo by AFP

It didn’t seem like the type of crime anyone could cover up. There were nearly 300 victims, 80 of them children, whose remains were scattered in fields of sunflowers for villagers and journalists to see.

Thousands of fragments of their passenger jet, a Boeing 777 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, had fallen across nearly 20 square miles of farmland in eastern Ukraine. Dozens of witnesses had seen the murder weapon, a Russian-made BUK anti-aircraft battery, trundling along the backroads of the warzone where the plane went down. There was plenty of evidence for the investigators to build a case.