DISINFO: There is no evidence of Russian involvement in the MH17 crash
SUMMARY
There is still no evidence of Russian involvement in the MH17 disaster; just rumours. Russia’s Foreign Ministry has rejected the Joint Investigation Team’s allegations that Russians were involved in the Malaysian Airlines Boeing MH17 crash in 2014. As in previous Joint Investigation Team press conferences, not a single piece of concrete evidence has been presented to substantiate such unlawful statements. The Joint Investigation Team is obviously confining itself to arguments that are not entirely reasonable. No information was available on the involvement of the Russian citizens mentioned in the 2014 Donbas air crash.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation about the downing of MH17 that denies Russia's responsibility. Recently, the Joint Investigation Team announced that it will issue international arrest warrants for three Russian military and intelligence officers – Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy, Oleg Pulatov – and Ukrainian national Leonid Kharchenko, commander of the military combat unit in Donetsk. They will be prosecuted for their involvement in the murder of the 298 passengers aboard MH17, which was brought down by a Russian Buk missile. The trial will begin next March. The Dutch-led criminal investigation by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) has been ongoing since 2014. On 28 September 2016, the JIT announced that flight MH17 was shot down by a missile from the 9M38 series, which was launched by a BUK TELAR missile system. The system was transported from the Russian Federation to an agricultural field near the town of Pervomaiskyi in Eastern Ukraine, from where the missile was launched. After firing, the system - with 1 missing missile - went back to the Russian Federation. On the 24th of May 2018, the JIT announced its conclusion that the BUK TELAR used to shoot down MH17 came from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, a unit of the Russian armed forces from Kursk in the Russian Federation. In 2018, Bellingcat established that the two people who, with great certainty, were involved in the MH17 disaster are the two Russian army high-ranking officers: GRU officer Oleh Ivannikov and General-Colonel Nikolai Tkachev. Previously, Bellingcat confirmed that the BUK missile launcher which hit the airline near Donetsk was brought from Russia. Read similar debunks about MH17 downing here, here and here.