How the Boeing was shot down: four main questions in the investigation of the downing of MH17. MH17: with compensation - not to us, with sanctions - not for a long time

Carrying out flight MH17, published the first preliminary results of its work. Wilbert Paulissen, head of the central department of criminal investigations of the Dutch national police, said at a press conference that the passenger plane was shot down from the area of ​​​​the settlement of Pervomayskoye, which is located south of the settlement of Snezhnoye.

According to the investigation, the Boeing was shot down by a Buk anti-aircraft missile system, which was located on a farm field. The place where the rocket was launched, the Dutch investigator specified, was at that time under the control of the militias. He marked the launch area with an area of ​​approximately 500 by 700 meters. According to Wilbert Paulissen, this is confirmed by US data, which estimated that the launch site was 6 kilometers south of Snizhne.

It is worth noting that these data were not confirmed by the results of experiments, previously by the Almaz-Antey concern, which produces the Buk air defense system. They showed that the Boeing had been shot down from the area of ​​Zaroshchenskoe, located about 20 kilometers west of Snezhnoye. It is authentically known that on the day of the plane crash, the village of Zaroshchenske was controlled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Last Monday, the head of the radio engineering troops of the Aerospace Forces (VKS) of Russia, Andrey Koban, at a briefing that the analysis of primary radar data refutes the possibility of launching an anti-aircraft missile from the area east of the crash site (this is where the village of Snezhnoye is located). According to him, if a Malaysian Boeing had been shot down by a missile from anywhere east of the crash site, it would have been definitely detected by Russian primary radar.

Also, the data of the international investigation in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) have already been refuted. "We did not have such air defense systems (the Buk air defense system - approx. RG) in our arsenal, and neither the systems themselves nor the specialists. Therefore, we could not shoot down the plane," the deputy commander of the Donetsk operational command told Interfax Eduard Basurin.

The DPR representative also recalled that after the Boeing was shot down, a statement from the American side appeared that they had satellite imagery confirming that it was shot down from militia-controlled territory. “However, 2 years have passed, and no one has seen these pictures. After they turned to Ukraine to provide materials from their radars, which aircraft were in the air at that time, no one provided anything either. began to claim that they shot down the Buk system from the territory controlled by the militia. I believe that this deliberately leads the investigation into a dead end, because the international commission is drawing the wrong conclusions for the second time, "Basurin said.

The representative of the DPR also recalled that the Buk complexes remained in service with Ukraine from Soviet times, and the Ukrainian side does not disclose data on where they were at the time of the crash.

Recall, on September 26, 2016, the official representative of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Major General Igor Konashenkov, that Russia Holland all the information regarding the crash of the Malaysian aircraft. "This is objective data, we are sure that this information will help the joint investigation team to establish the true causes of the crash of the Malaysian plane in the Ukrainian sky," the military said at a press conference in Moscow.

In addition, he noted that due to the position of Ukraine, which does not provide data, "the investigation is on the wrong track - from conflicting data on submunitions to an incorrect definition of the type of missile and, as a result, the place of its launch." “Despite requests from both Russia and other countries, as well as relatives of the victims, Kiev has not made public information about the location of its Buk air defense systems on the day of the disaster, the negotiations of air traffic controllers, primarily military ones, as well as data on activity in the day of the crash of their radar stations, data on the operation of the Ukrainian air defense systems and the testimony of witnesses," General Konashenkov said.

On Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry and the developers of the Utes-T airborne radar complex - the Lianozovsky Electromechanical Plant (LEMZ) scientific and production association - presented a detailed recording from Russian means of objective airspace control on the day of the Boeing tragedy over Donbass. According to it, the radar located to the east of the crash site did not record any third-party air objects in the vicinity of the aircraft, except for two civilian airliners. "Near the Malaysian aircraft, the Ust-Donetsk radar did not observe any third-party objects that could cause its destruction," Viktor Meshcheryakov, deputy chief designer of LEMZ, said at a briefing in Moscow.

A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 on a course from Amsterdam (Netherlands) to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) crashed in Ukrainian airspace on July 17, 2014. There were 298 people on board the plane, all of them died. Of these, 192 citizens of the Netherlands (one also had US citizenship), 44 Malaysian citizens, including 15 crew members, 27 Australian citizens, 12 Indonesians, 10 British citizens (one also had South African citizenship), four Germans and four Belgians, three Filipinos, one Canadian and one New Zealand.

The international team leading the investigation includes experts from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine. The group is led by a representative from the Netherlands. On October 13, 2015, the commission of the Netherlands Security Council, which was investigating the causes of the crash of the liner, reported that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile fired from the Buk air defense system.

Australian Foreign Minister Julia Bishop said that it is still premature to talk about the conclusions of the investigation into the crash of the Malaysian Boeing MH17, shot down in the sky over the Donbass in 2014. So she commented on the statement of her New Zealand colleague Winston Peters, who doubted that Russia was responsible for the tragedy. International investigators claim that the plane was shot down by the Buk air defense system from the area under the control of the DPR. Data from the Russian radar station indicate that the launch was made from the territory where Ukrainian air defense systems were located. According to experts, the West began to understand that the case is being conducted unprofessionally and deliberately dragged out. Why politicians started talking about the non-involvement of the Russian Federation in the disaster over the Donbass, RT found out.

• Crash site of Malaysian Boeing MH17
• Reuters

"Contradicts the interests of the country"

Australian Foreign Minister Julia Bishop said that for now it is not worth talking about any conclusions on the investigation by the international Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of the crash of the Malaysian Boeing MH17 over the Donbass on July 17, 2014. Of the 298 who died, 38 were Australian citizens.

“The investigation is ongoing and when completed, the results will be shared with the prosecutors for legal action, which Australia also strongly supports,” the Australian Foreign Minister said. “It is impossible to form an opinion on the evidence because it has not yet been released.”

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Canberra does not view Russia and China as a military threat. This was announced on Monday by the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Australia...

Previously, Bishop made much more confident statements in this regard. So, in October 2016, she argued that it was necessary to find those responsible for the destruction of the aircraft "in the Russian military command."

“Recently, Australia’s policy has changed, it has become less confrontational with respect to Russia,” said Mikhail Alexandrov, an expert at the MGIMO Center for Military-Political Studies, in an interview with RT.

The political scientist attributes this change to the losses from anti-Russian sanctions and the departure in 2015 from the post of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who made anti-Russian statements.

Bishop's new statement came after her New Zealand colleague Winston Peters, in an interview with the local newspaper Newshub, said that there was no evidence of Russia's involvement in the destruction of a civilian aircraft.

“You say that the person who launched the rocket did so on Russian orders. The big problem is that your argument from a legal point of view immediately sags, since you have no evidence of this, ”said the New Zealand Foreign Minister.

Speaking about the proposal to resume talks on the creation of a free trade zone with Russia, which were interrupted in 2014, Peters stressed that his country cannot waste time waiting for the outcome of the investigation.

“If, as a result, it turns out that these insinuations have no actual confirmation, then we will simply waste time, and this is not in the interests of our country,” the minister said.

• New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters
• Reuters

“Indeed, there is no evidence,” Alexandrov notes. - And the involvement of the Donbass militias has not been proven either. Much indicates that it was the Kiev regime that shot down the plane. Both New Zealanders and Australians understand this. But the New Zealanders are more free in their statements, and the Australians are still connected with the US by the ANZUS military treaty (New Zealand and the US broke the military cooperation agreement back in 1987. — RT), so they are more careful.”

Illegitimate investigation

The criminal investigation into the Malaysian Airlines Boeing MH17 crash has been going on for four years, since the creation on August 4, 2014 of the Joint Investigation Team, which included representatives from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine. On October 13, 2015, the Dutch Safety Board published the results, in which it stated that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile, which is part of the Buk, Buk-M1 and Buk-M1-2 air defense systems. In October 2016, the JIT stated that the rocket was launched from the area of ​​​​the villages of Pervomayskoye and Snezhnoye, which was controlled by the DPR militias.

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Five countries participating in the investigation into the crash of flight MH17 in the skies over Donbass have signed a memorandum of political support for the criminal...

As an expert of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Vitaly Bordunov noted in an interview with RT, the JIT is, in principle, an illegitimate institution from the point of view of international law.

“If these were decent, normal people who really respect international law, they would have acted as they should. Ukraine was supposed to organize an appropriate investigation together with Malaysia, which was not done, ”the expert notes.

According to Bordunov, the crash of the Boeing MH17 over the Donbas falls under Article 26 and Annex 13 of the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation. According to the document, Ukraine, as the country where the tragedy occurred, had to conclude an investigation agreement with Malaysia, which owned the aircraft, and not with the Netherlands, and register it according to ICAO rules. The agreement was also to be tested for compliance with the principles of the Chicago Convention. This procedure assumes control of the investigation by ICAO. None of the above was done.

“This international commission was created outside the framework of international law, it is headed by a district police officer of a small Dutch town, where there are no specialists, nothing,” the expert emphasizes. - All this is typical for the current situation in the world: if anything, Russia is to blame. It doesn't matter if there's no evidence."

• Reconstruction of MH17 in Gilze Reijen, Netherlands, October 13, 2015
• Reuters

According to the expert, "ICAO is on the sidelines," and the investigation itself is more like a conspiracy to blame Russia.

In October 2016, Moscow handed over primary radar data to investigators that cast doubt on the conclusions of the Joint Investigation Team about the launch of the missile that downed MH17.

“As both the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation and representatives of the concern have already stated, when launching a rocket from Pervomaisky, this would be reflected on the radar data without fail. But this is not reflected on the radar, ”said Maria Zakharova, official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, in November 2016.

However, the investigation has not yet responded to these data.

“According to experts, all this is simply recorded, everything is visible in this scenario, but they did not pay attention to our data, as if they were not there,” Bordunov said.

bias factor

On March 12, 2018, the Dutch investigative journalism program Zembla named the main suspects in the downing of the plane.

These are the former Minister of Defense of the DPR Igor Strelkov, his subordinate Sergey Dubinsky and retired Colonel General of the Russian Armed Forces Nikolai Tkachev. Allegedly, these names were reported to the investigation by the Security Service of Ukraine. Previously, journalists, including Australian ones, have repeatedly made similar "sensational" revelations, however, according to Bordunov, "this is a fake, from a legal point of view, this evidence cannot be taken seriously."

The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly noted the special attitude of the Joint Investigation Group towards Ukraine. In particular, the absence of a negative reaction to the fact that Kyiv hides some of the information: it refuses to provide data on the negotiations of military dispatchers and the location of Ukrainian air defense systems of the Buk family. At the same time, Russia, unlike Ukraine, does not have the status of a full member of the JIT. In addition, the JIT uses as evidence materials from the “investigation” of the Bellingcat website, based on data from social networks.

“In legal language, this is called bias, unwillingness to figure out who did what and who did what,” says the ICAO expert. “And if so, how long this investigation will last, I don’t know, there are games of their own.”

On February 22, 2018, the Dutch Ministry of Justice announced the extension of the investigation until 2019, although earlier it was going to publish the results at the beginning of 2018. The department announced this in a report to Parliament. According to the Dutch Ministry of Justice, so far, four years after the disaster,. Nevertheless, despite the incompleteness of the investigation, The Hague "is preparing for the start of the trial." And although the Ministry of Justice of the Netherlands claims that it has read the report of Russian specialists, the conclusions drawn from it are not announced.

“There is no clarity on this issue,” Bordunov said. “There is only one conversation that Russia is to blame for everything.”

In October 2017, the Dutch Supreme Court allowed the government not to publish the results of the Joint Investigation Team's investigation.

“They cannot tell the truth,” says Mikhail Alexandrov. - If we confirm the innocence of Russia and the Donbass militias, then we must blame Ukraine. And this will be a politically strong blow to Kyiv.”

According to the expert, as soon as the investigation admits that Ukraine shot down the plane, this will call into question its relations with Europe, which neither the US, nor NATO, nor the EU will do.

“They can’t lie openly, they can’t admit the truth either, so they are dragging it out,” Alexandrov summed up.

The International Investigation Team (JIT) said the Buk that shot down MH17 was flown to Ukraine from Russia. JIT will continue to look for the culprits

The wreckage of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 (flight MH17) at the Gilse Reijen military base in the Netherlands (Photo: RIA Novosti / Maxim Blinov)

What and how did the investigation prove?

On September 28, during the presentation, the head of the central department of criminal investigations of the National Police of the Netherlands, Wilbert Paulissen, and the Attorney General of the Netherlands, Fred Westerbeck, showed photographs of the contrail of a launched rocket. Investigators were able to tie the photograph to the area and determine where the strike came from. In order to more accurately determine the location of the Buk installation, the commission interviewed witnesses who were not far from the location of the combat vehicle.

The International Investigation Team (JIT) into the circumstances of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing crash. Investigators found that the Buk from which the Malaysian plane was shot down was delivered to Ukraine through the Russian border. The JIT also determined the location of the rocket launch. According to the report, the rocket that hit MH17 was launched from an agricultural field near the village of Pervomaisky. After the attack on Boeing, the self-propelled unit was delivered back to Russian territory, follows from the published text of the report.

In addition to interviews, satellite images, intelligence data from the United States and the Netherlands, the JIT operated with a large number of videos and photographs of eyewitnesses of the column's progress. Pictures have been added to 3D model which illustrated the course of events.

According to Alexander Domrin, a professor at the Faculty of Law at the Higher School of Economics, this evidence can only be accepted by the court as circumstantial. “Some telephone conversations, some facts of the movement of some equipment - all these are indirect facts,” agrees Valery Vanin, a member of the International Union of Lawyers.

How did they react abroad?

Foreign politicians have been reluctant to comment on the results of the MH17 crash investigation. One of the first to speak was the deputy of the German Bundestag from the Green Party, Marieluise Beck. “Even if we assume that the strike on the plane was the result of a military error, the political responsibility lies with the Kremlin and President Putin personally,” she said.

The US official position was more reserved. "The United States welcomes the interim report of the International Investigation Team into the downing of flight MH17," State Department spokesman John Kirby said. He emphasized that the results of the investigation reinforce the statement of the head of department, John Kerry, made a few days after the crash, that "the liner was shot down by the Buk air defense system from the territory controlled by pro-Russian separatists."

The JIT report was supported by the head of the European External Action Service (EEAS), Federica Mogherini. “To ensure that those responsible for the downing of MH17 are held accountable, the continued support of the investigation by the global community is required,” Mogherini said, adding that the independence and thoroughness of the investigation is “critical.”

What does Moscow say?

After the announced results of the investigation, the Russian Foreign Ministry expressed dissatisfaction with the position of the JIT. “Russia is disappointed that the situation around the Boeing crash investigation is not changing. The findings of the Dutch prosecutor's office confirm that the investigation is biased," said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. She lamented that the JIT removed Moscow from full participation in the investigative process, while Ukraine was made a full member of the JIT. According to the representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, this gave Ukraine "the ability to forge evidence."

Moscow, even before the presentation began, denied any links between Russia or the self-proclaimed republics with the downing of MH17.

“In this case, it is important to draw conclusions, given the latest information that has been published, namely the primary data of the radars, which recorded all flying objects that could launch or be in the air in the territory controlled by the militias,” Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov journalists an hour before the JIT press conference.

“No Russian anti-aircraft missile systems, including the Buk, have ever crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov later in the day. He questioned the results of the JIT's work, saying that the report was based on "two sources: the Internet and Ukraine's special services."

Mikhail Malyshevsky, adviser to the chief designer of the Almaz-Antey concern, expressed more specific claims to the course of the investigation: the commission of inquiry made a mistake in determining the damage zone and the course of the missile. Malyshevsky said that in 2015 classified data was sent to the Netherlands, which were not taken into account by the JIT. According to Almaz-Antey, the missile could have been fired from the area south of Zaroshchensky, in Ukraine-controlled territory.

As evidence, Moscow also cites the testimony of the Utes-T radar complex in the Rostov region. The complex did not record launches on the territory of the self-proclaimed republics on the day of the tragedy, however, it noticed the work of Ukrainian air defense in the crash area, told On September 26, the head of the radio engineering troops of the Russian Aerospace Forces Andrey Koban told reporters.

What and who is at risk?

At the end of the press conference, the Attorney General of the Netherlands Westerbeck announced the continuation of the investigation until 2018. The court for the proceedings will be set after the JIT forms a list of official suspects. So far, according to the prosecutor, there are about 100 people involved in the transportation and maintenance of the Buk on the list. According to Eric Toller, head of the Russian direction of Bellingcat, the group gave the JIT a list of those involved in the transfer of the Buk to the Russian-Ukrainian border. “JIT gives suspects and those who know something the opportunity to cooperate with the commission,” says Toller. According to him, we are talking about immunity from prosecution.

The commission has already begun searching for defendants in the case. The JIT published a series of telephone conversations between two men with the callsigns Orion and Delfin. Earlier, negotiations of a person with the call sign Orion were published by Novaya Gazeta. The publication calls Orion a military adviser to the commandant's office of the self-proclaimed LNR.

“This report is not properly placed in the legal space,” says RSUH professor Marina Filimonova. According to her, JIT did not designate "participants of the legal relationship and the object of the legal relationship." Filimonova argues that none of the four international courts in the world will allow the Netherlands to pass the threshold of succession of the application.

“A weak evidence base will not prevent an international tribunal from making a decision,” international lawyer Valery Vanin disagrees.

International law does not provide for the possibility of blaming the state as a whole, emphasizes Dmitry Labin, professor at the MGIMO Department of International Law. “Responsibility for war crimes is individual, verdicts will be issued on specific individuals. You can’t blame Russia, because Russia is not a party to the conflict, ”the expert believes.

So she commented on the statement of her New Zealand colleague Winston Peters, who doubted that Russia was responsible for the tragedy. International investigators claim that the plane was shot down by the Buk air defense system from the area under the control of the DPR.

Data from the Russian radar station indicate that the launch was made from the territory where Ukrainian air defense systems were located. According to experts, the West began to understand that the case is being conducted unprofessionally and deliberately dragged out.

Why politicians started talking about the non-involvement of the Russian Federation in the disaster over the Donbass, RT found out.

“Contradicts the interests of the country”

Australian Foreign Minister Julia Bishop said that for now it is not worth talking about any conclusions on the investigation by the international Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of the crash of the Malaysian Boeing MH17 over the Donbass on July 17, 2014. Of the 298 who died, 38 were Australian citizens.

"The investigation is ongoing and, when completed, the results will be shared with the prosecutors for legal action, which Australia also strongly supports," the Australian foreign minister said. “It is impossible to form an opinion on the evidence because it has not yet been released.”

Previously, Bishop made much more confident statements in this regard. So, in October 2016, she argued that it was necessary to find those responsible for the destruction of the aircraft "in the Russian military command."

“Recently, Australia’s policy has changed, it has become less confrontational towards Russia,” said Mikhail Alexandrov, an expert at the MGIMO Center for Military-Political Studies, in an interview with RT.

The political scientist attributes this change to the losses from anti-Russian sanctions and the departure from the post of prime minister in 2015 of Tony Abbott, who made anti-Russian statements.

Bishop's new statement came after her New Zealand colleague Winston Peters, in an interview with the local newspaper Newshub, said that there was no evidence of Russia's involvement in the destruction of a civilian aircraft.

“You say that the person who launched the rocket did so on Russian orders. The big problem is that your argument from a legal point of view immediately sags, since you have no evidence of this, ”said the New Zealand Foreign Minister.

Speaking about the proposal to resume talks on the creation of a free trade zone with Russia, which were interrupted in 2014, Peters stressed that his country cannot waste time waiting for the outcome of the investigation.

“If it turns out that these insinuations have no actual confirmation, then we will simply waste time, and this is not in the interests of our country,” the minister said.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters Reuters

Source: http://rusvesna.su/news/1520968587

“Indeed, there is no evidence,” Alexandrov notes. - And the involvement of the Donbass militias has not been proven either. Much indicates that it was the Kiev regime that shot down the plane. Both New Zealanders and Australians understand this. But the New Zealanders are more free in their statements, and the Australians are still connected with the US by the ANZUS military treaty (New Zealand and the US broke the military cooperation agreement back in 1987), so they are more cautious.”

Illegitimate investigation

The criminal investigation into the crash of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing MH17 has been going on for four years - since the creation of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) on August 4, 2014, which included representatives from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine.

On October 13, 2015, the Dutch Safety Board published the results of a technical investigation, in which it stated that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile, which is part of the Buk, Buk-M1 and Buk-M1-2 air defense systems. . In October 2016, the JIT stated that the rocket was launched from the area of ​​​​the villages of Pervomayskoye and Snezhnoye, which was controlled by the DPR militias.

As an expert of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Vitaly Bordunov noted in an interview with RT, the JIT is, in principle, an illegitimate institution from the point of view of international law.

“If these were decent, normal people who really respected international law, they would have done the right thing. Ukraine should have organized an appropriate investigation together with Malaysia, which was not done,” the expert notes.

According to Bordunov, the crash of the Boeing MH17 over Donbas falls under Article 26 and Annex 13 of the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation.

According to the document, Ukraine, as the country where the tragedy occurred, had to conclude an investigation agreement with Malaysia, which owned the aircraft, and not with the Netherlands, and register it according to ICAO rules. The agreement was also to be tested for compliance with the principles of the Chicago Convention. This procedure assumes control of the investigation by ICAO. None of this was done.

“This international commission was created outside the framework of international law, it is headed by a district police officer of a small Dutch town, where there are no specialists, nothing,” the expert emphasizes.

All this is typical for the current situation in the world, if anything, Russia is to blame. It doesn't matter if there's no evidence."

According to the expert, "ICAO is on the sidelines," and the investigation itself is more like a "conspiracy" to blame Russia.

In October 2016, Moscow handed over to the investigation primary radar data that cast doubt on the conclusions of the Joint Investigation Team about the launch of the missile that downed MH17.

“As both the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation and representatives of the Almaz-Antey concern have already stated, when launching a rocket from Pervomaisky, this would be reflected on the radar data without fail. And this is not reflected on the radar, ”said Maria Zakharova, official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, in November 2018.

However, the investigation has not yet responded to these data.

“According to experts, all this is simply recorded, everything is visible in this scenario, but they did not pay attention to our data, as if they did not exist,” Bordunov said.

bias factor

On March 12, 2018, the Dutch investigative journalism program Zembla named the main suspects in the downing of the plane.

These are allegedly ex-Minister of Defense of the DPR Igor Strelkov, his subordinate Sergei Dubinsky and retired Colonel General of the Russian Armed Forces Nikolai Tkachev. Allegedly, these names were reported to the investigation by the Security Service of Ukraine.

Previously, journalists, including Australian ones, have repeatedly made revelations similar in terms of "sensationalism", however, according to Bordunov, "this is a fake, from a legal point of view, this evidence cannot be taken seriously."

The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly noted the special attitude of the Joint Investigation Group towards Ukraine. In particular, there is no negative reaction to the fact that Kyiv hides some of the information: it refuses to provide data on the negotiations of military dispatchers and the location of the Ukrainian air defense systems of the Buk family. At the same time, Russia, unlike Ukraine, does not have the status of a full member of the JIT. In addition, the JIT uses as evidence materials from the “investigation” of the Bellingcat website, based on data from social networks.

“In legal language, this is called bias, unwillingness to figure out who did what, - says the ICAO expert. “And if so, then how long this investigation will last, I don’t know, there are games of their own here.”

On February 22, 2018, the Dutch Ministry of Justice announced the extension of the investigation until 2019, although earlier it was going to publish the results as early as early 2018. The department announced this in a report to Parliament.

According to the Dutch Ministry of Justice, until now, four years after the disaster, the remains of the victims' bodies are being collected. Nevertheless, despite the incompleteness of the investigation, The Hague "is preparing for the start of the trial." And although the Ministry of Justice of the Netherlands claims that it has read the report of Russian specialists, the conclusions drawn from it are not announced.

“There is no clarity on this issue,” Bordunov said. “There is only one conversation that Russia is to blame for everything.”

In October 2017, the Dutch Supreme Court allowed the government not to publish the results of the Joint Investigation Team's investigation.

“They cannot tell the truth,” says Mikhail Alexandrov. - If you confirm the non-involvement of Russia and the Donbass militias, then you have to blame Ukraine. And this will be a politically strong blow to Kyiv.”

According to the expert, as soon as the investigation admits that Ukraine shot down the plane, this one will call into question the relations of this country with Europe, which neither the US, nor NATO, nor the EU will do.

“They can’t lie openly, they can’t admit the truth either, so they are dragging it out,” Alexandrov summed up.

The Commission of Inquiry into the death of the Malaysian Boeing again managed to make a political somersault, accusing Russia and the Donbass militias of involvement in it, and at the same time not announcing any final conclusions. Many experts therefore come to yet another confirmation of their suspicions that in fact the Dutch investigators have long known the true culprit of the tragedy, but they do not dare to name him ...

The culprit is determined by social networks

At the moment, the investigators of the Joint Group are not ready to draw any conclusions, the names of those responsible for the crash of the Malaysian Boeing MH17 will not be named. This was stated by the investigators themselves.

They extended the term of the investigation for the next, or the third, or the fifth time - now until 2018. According to German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer, "the general investigation team is currently not in a position to start the relevant paperwork."

It is worth adding that earlier the investigators, presenting their report, formed in the course of many months of work, stated that they used ... data from social networks as evidence.

It was from these sources that they dug up a video, which allegedly shows that the Buk system, from which the Boeing was shot down, was being transported from the territory of Russia. In addition, the investigators cited a transcript of the conversations in Russian, where unnamed persons spoke freely about what happened to the Boeing. These transcripts, in fact, are cited as evidence of Russia's involvement in the crash.

However, no. There are also testimonies from relatives of those who died on the plane, who believe that the gun that shot down the liner was brought from Russia.

Persuasiveness, as they say, rolls over. Especially against the background of the fact that the investigators themselves admitted that they did not use the data of Russian experts in the investigation. But Russia brought and was ready to officially, legally binding to bring not only the expert opinion of the manufacturers of the Buk system - the Almaz-Antey company - and the results of full-scale experiments conducted here, but also data from radars and tracking systems of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

At this point, the conversation about the reliability of the next report of the Dutch Commission can be completed. As Viktor Litovkin, a prominent military expert, noted, "he does not even strike with unprofessionalism and bias - he is all unprofessionalism and bias."

But it is all the more interesting to return to the question again, whose role in the tragedy over the Donbass are the Dutch so carefully hiding? Ukraine? Or someone more important than this colonial territory of the West?

Let's listen to the experts

Viktor Litovkin:

"There are doubts about the objectivity of the investigation team: there are representatives of Ukraine and no representatives of Russia. This indicates the one-sidedness of the formation of this commission and the one-sidedness of its approach. The results of its work were initially politically set, and its conclusions, which we heard today, were determined in advance It is for this reason that the commission did not accept and did not take into account any of the evidence and none of the results of strictly scientific expertise that Russia provided to it.

Second, the allegations that the Buk was delivered from Russia, shot down the Boeing, and then sent back, raise strong doubts. How did the commission determine this? What, they have satellite footage? Do they have any fixed travel documents? They don't talk about it. Maybe testimonies? And what about the witnesses, do they understand the "Buks"? Will they distinguish a Ukrainian car from a Russian one? How? By numbers? This is also bullshit."

An important circumstance pointed out by the expert is that it is not just "Buk" that appears in the case. It's just that "Bukov" does not exist. There are Buk-M1 complexes with 9M38 missiles, which are only in service with Ukraine and which are not in service with Russia. In Russia there is a Buk-M2. Can rural social media witnesses tell one model from another?

Further, Viktor Litovkin pointed out. Buk-M1 is armed with 9M38 missiles. In Russia, they were decommissioned in 1996. They remained only in Ukraine and in several foreign countries where Buks were delivered.

Is it possible to distinguish Ukrainian missiles from Russian ones? Easy! This is exactly what the Almaz-Antey concern suggested to the investigators. And this could be a key evidence: the holes in the fuselage of the aircraft from the striking elements of our missiles should only be I-beams, in the form of a butterfly, and from the Ukrainian obsolete ones - in the form of trapezoidal and triangular holes. This is no longer the opinion of a rural grandmother about what brand of military vehicle clanged past her in an incomprehensible direction. These are verifiable facts.

What holes are fixed on pieces of the fuselage of a downed Boeing?

It is curious that in Finland, according to Viktor Litovkin, an experiment was conducted to determine what striking holes should be from old Soviet-made missiles now presented in Ukraine (the Finns still have such missiles). So - here's the strangeness! - from the information that was leaked to the press about this experiment, nothing was said about the shape of the holes!

Since the test was carried out obviously to test a similar one, publicly demonstrated by the Russians, this panicky silence means only one thing: the Finns' missiles turned out to be "of the wrong system." Or, more precisely, the one from which the holes on the remains of the downed Boeing are Ukrainian.

Is it worth recalling that the data of the Russian full-scale test were not reflected in the report of the commission?

Animals, not militias!

The Dutch investigative team did not take into account the results of any of the investigations made in Russia, Viktor Litovkin stated. In particular, there are no very deep, very detailed, scientifically substantiated, engineering-calculated Almaz-Antey data, which were obtained last year and sent to the Dutch side. They did not take into account the data provided by the Russian Ministry of Defense and the creators of the Utes radar station, which saw everything that happened in eastern Ukraine.

But there are generally ridiculous statements in the report.

"The commission claims that the crew were not Russians, but militias,- analyzes it further Litovkin. - Question: where among the militia was there a whole crew that knows how to control the Buk-M1 launcher? But in order for the Buk to be able to accurately fire at an air target, it must be not one launcher, but at least a battery complex. That is, in addition to the launcher, there should be a target detection station, a target tracking station, and a targeting station. And only when the target "passed" through all three radar stations and they transmitted its coordinates and course of movement to the launcher, only then can the launcher strike.

The launcher itself can also fire at the target, but ... strongly theoretically, the military expert admits. In practice, this is almost impossible to do, because its locator has a sweep angle of only 8 degrees. From 360! This means that the calculation of the launcher had to know in advance at what point in the celestial sphere, at what height, at what course the Boeing was supposed to fly. This is where in the expanses of the Donbass torn apart in July 2014, among the militia defending from the last forces - miners, policemen, drivers - did you manage to find such animals so that they could carry out an accurate launch in such conditions? "If we take into account that, as previously reported, the Ukrainian air traffic controllers changed the course of the flight of the Boeing, it turns out that the Ukrainian air traffic controllers and the militias were in cahoots to bring down this aircraft,"- Litovkin additionally taunts.

We will talk about Ukrainian dispatchers a little later, but for now, let's remember this word: "collusion" ...

During a briefing by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation and representatives of the military-industrial complex about the primary radar data in the area of ​​the crash of the Boeing-777 aircraft in the Donetsk region, which was operating flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014. Photo: Sergey Bobylev / press service of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation / TASS

And finally, where is the logic?

"From our side, the truth is simple: the Ukrainians shot down the Boeing. Because two years ago, our generals told in detail, showed a map where the Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile division was located, from which only a killer missile could fly,"- Victor Litovkin is sure.

This is logical, because it is justified by technical logic and means of objective control. But on the side of the opponents, not a single argument put forward by the investigation team obeys normal human logic, the military expert concludes. The Dutch claim that the Buk was delivered from the territory of Russia, the plane was shot down on it by the militias, and the commission has no complaints against Russia! Well, where is the logic?

But another Tsargrad expert, analyst, political scientist and philosopher Alexander Sobyanin, points to the hidden logic of such an argument:

“In fact, in this investigation, everything dances around the Dutch interpretation. Holland has already received 30 pieces of silver from the Americans for playing its dirty role, and the position of its commission is no longer important, he says. - Everything dances around the role of the Dnepropetrovsk aviation hub and the participation of the US Air Force. But only this question is not discussed at the official level, and it is because of this that whole blocks of questions are omitted in the reports that tear logic apart, but which the Dutch cannot even consider.

“Therefore, the most important thing for the Dutch side in the investigation is that there should be no charges, no, - the Russian analyst makes a key conclusion. - Otherwise, the "offended" side may want to delve into the discussion of truly important points.

What are these moments? "The key role in this event belongs to the American air traffic controllers who were in Dnepropetrovsk, as well as to the Ukrainian air traffic controllers, who then, as you know, disappeared somewhere," Sobyanin is convinced. It was they who directed the Boeing to where it was shot down. And the records of their negotiations (the key ones, as you know) do not appear in any of the materials of the investigation. And the American dispatchers were generally "taken out" of the case.

And now let's remember Viktor Litovkin's sarcastic remark about the "presence" of collusion between dispatchers and militias. However, all sarcasm immediately disappears if Ukrainian anti-aircraft gunners are substituted into the conspiracy formula instead of militias. And everything becomes surprisingly logical and harmonious: the change in the course of the aircraft by the controllers, and the subsequent disappearance of the controllers, and the extreme accuracy of the missilemen...

At the crash site of a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 flying on the Amsterdam-Kuala Lumpur route near the village of Grabovo. Photo: ITAR-TASS/Zurab Javakhadze

"There are a number of similar issues, which, again, the attention of the investigators for some reason does not extend,- indicates the expert. - There are very specific questions that are voiced by experts, but which are hushed up in the media and in the reports of the Dutch Commission. Therefore, one conclusion remains to be drawn: the commission is clearly shielding the true culprit of the tragedy."

That is why, let us add, the Commission of Inquiry so toothlessly and obligingly accuses Russia without accusations. If you go too far, Moscow may turn its attention to the "damned" questions of the investigation. That is why the logic of the commission, which has no claims against Russia, although the rebels allegedly received the Buk installation from it, more than anything in the world resembles the proposal of a rotten compromise: we will bite you lightly, without going beyond the biting that is already familiar to you during the current information war , and you don’t ask questions about the role of American dispatchers in all this dirty business ...

So, who is the culprit of the Boeing tragedy? It is not difficult to guess the result of even the current cursory investigation of Tsargrad. This is not Russia - the commission does not lay the blame on it. This is not Ukraine - its commission diligently shields, but it is a trifle. These are not militias, despite all the accusations against them - they were not able to shoot down the plane.

Only one participant remains. The one whose controllers were sitting at a key point in the route leading to death. And whose money encourages the Dutch investigators to tell pitiful and helpless lies.

Alexander Tsyganov

Expert opinions

Chairman of the People's Council of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) Denis Pushilin:

They did not listen to the point of view of the Russian Federation. And not a point of view, but objective information, that is, the primary data of the radar equipment, that is, the information that could really shed light on the catastrophe. Of course, the conclusions of the commission are not very different from what we heard initially - statements that the militias are to blame along with Russia. But this is not true, because we did not have any such tasks and goals. Well, this once again confirms the data that the Russian Federation has already provided.

And of course, it raises a lot of questions and bewilderment, why did the Ukrainian representative office not provide data from their radar facilities? Why didn't the US provide the satellite imagery it claims to have? And why the Dutch Commission did not insist that this information be provided. That is, I repeat, it causes a lot of bewilderment. We consider this information, these conclusions biased, untrue.

Editor-in-Chief of the magazine "National Defense", an expert on military topics Igor Korotchenko:

Why does Holland prefer social networks to raw data from Russian experts? Because initially the purpose of the investigation was not to establish the truth, but to prove the accusation that was made immediately after the incident - the accusation of Russia that it was responsible for this catastrophe. In fact, the investigation performed the functions of parsing that information and interpreting it in such a way that this version was dominant. That is why social networks and fakes that were posted there were used, and not the data of Russian experts and not the data of field experiments conducted by Almaz-Antey.

I think we should not always be in the position of making excuses. It turns out that we are constantly accused, and we make excuses, we are accused again - we make excuses again, and so on ad infinitum.

Donetsk. 22 July. During the transfer of the flight recorders of the crashed Boeing 777 to representatives of Malaysia. Photo: ITAR-TASS/Zurab Javakhadze

I believe that an international expert group should be formed in Russia, which could independently analyze all the available facts, make an independent report and present it to the world community.

Political scientist, head of the Center for Eurasian Studies Vladimir Kornilov:

We all expected something new from this report. But by and large, the investigative commission (emphasizing, by the way, that the investigation is not completed) cited everything that we have already seen and heard repeatedly, and regularly. Up to the point that they reproduced the same maps that the National Defense Security Council of Holland presented. At the same time, they claim that this zone was controlled by the DPR and LPR militia, which actually contradicts the facts and information of the Ukrainian National Defense Council.

All that I have now heard new from this report is some kind of audio conversations. I still don’t understand who is with whom and where these audio conversations come from, to be honest. Because their source seems rather strange. But again, they don't prove anything. By and large, we saw everything that was distributed by social networks. And for some reason, these rumors and gossip spread on social networks were taken as the basis for conclusions, far-reaching conclusions. Why - we also understand everything perfectly.

Analytical Center of Tsargrad