Eliot Higgins, the founder of the Bellingcat investigative group, says that it is the commander of the Russian military who is responsible for sending military equipment into Ukraine, including the Buk surface-to-air missile system that downed flight MH17 in Donbas in July 2014.
“Ultimately, the responsibility for sending military equipment into Ukraine is the responsibility of the commander of the Russian military. So, where that specific order came from is hard for us to know, but keep in mind the joint investigation team have a large number of intercepted communications that are a part of the case as well. So maybe in there we have the person who requested the [Buk] missile launcher, and we can see who that request went to. And then we can understand who they would have to have actually spoken to allow that to happen,” he said in an interview with Deutsche Welle.
