Quote: "My point is that, after MI-5 (or is it MI-6? I never can remember the difference) analyze
the contents, if the facts don't match what they want them to be, then they will either (1) destroy
the evidence, or (2) suppress it."
This piece is good, it provides actual radar coordinates
and other data for techies to examine. Also:
On Monday, the Russian government, with almost every major global media outlet in attendance,
released all of its air traffic data and satellite imaging data (in fact, only part of it)
– all verifiable, including time stamps and supporting data. The entire content of the
presentation was also handed over to the European authorities. The conclusions to be
drawn from this are stunning, to say the least. Despite the public release of this information,
US and British media outlets did report back to its people on these findings. They
are as follows:
Minutes before the downing of MH17, the plane made a mysterious 'Left Turn'
as it flew over the Donetsk area at approximately 5:20pm Moscow time, making a sharp
14km deviation, before attempting to regain its previous course before dropping altitude
disappearing from radar at 5:23pm. As we previously pointed out, air traffic controllers
in Kiev had already diverted MH17 200 miles further north into the target zone, so the
question remains: was Kiev ATC also responsible for this final, fatal diversion,
or is there another reason for this unusual turn (see 'Mysterious Left Turn', below)?
According to clear satellite images provided, on July 16th, the Ukrainian Army positioned
3-4 anti-aircraft BUK M1 SAM missile batteries close to Donetsk. These systems included
full launching, loading and radio location units, located in the immediate vicinity
of the MH17 crash site. One system was placed approximately 8km northwest of Lugansk.
In addition, a radio location system for these Ukrainian Army missile batteries is situated
5km north of Donetsk. On July 17th, the day of the incident, these batteries were
moved to a position 8km south of Shahktyorsk. In addition to this, two other radio
location units are also identified in the immediate vicinity. These SAM systems had
a range of 35km distance, and 25km altitude.
From July 18th, after the downing of MH17, Kiev's BUK launchers were then moved
away from the firing zone.
yalensis, yeah, it's really bad news that the black boxes were sent to the UK, particularly
since the anti-Kiev fighters had taken so much trouble to keep them out of Kiev's hands
and give them over to Malaysian officials only for those officials to hand them to one of
Kiev's main ideological backers.
However, the US/UK can't be absolutely sure who
else might have a recording of the Kiev Control Tower's conversation with MH17 – just as
they couldn't be absolutely sure what Russia's radar and satellites saw – so blatant tampering
may be highly risky.
Does anyone know if there are any back-up systems for the black boxes and, if so, what
happened to them? I find it hard to believe that Russia would be unaware of the risk of
the black box data being manipulated and, if aware, would be inactive in trying to head
that problem off at the pass.
The black boxes are sealed for expressly the purpose of assuring investigators they are
getting the raw data and that it has not been altered prior to official inspection. They
are all prominently marked "Do Not Open", and I believe they are pressurized inside so that
if one is opened the pressure will be equalized and inspectors will know it has been tampered
with.
I suppose if you were really, really swept up you could discover what the internal pressure
is, open it, mess with the recording in such a seamless manner that your insertion of false
data was undetectable, and then re-pressurize it and duplicate the warning seal (unless
you removed the original very carefully without tearing it, clever, clever), but that
seems a lot of work when in the present situation there is so much contrary evidence which
suggests Ukraine was at fault. Why rig it so they're to blame if they actually are?
You're right, I don't think Brits will actually TAMPER with the boxes.
My point is that,
after MI-5 (or is it MI-6? I never can remember the difference) analyze the contents,
if the facts don't match what they want them to be, then they will either (1) destroy
the evidence, or (2) suppress it.
We may get some statements to the media, along the lines of, "The data was corrupted
by mishandling…" or something like that…
Or maybe even: "The data is too sensitive, from an intelligence standpoint, to be released
to the public." (falls into Official Secrets Act, etc etc)
Well, they won't go with option B, I can promise, because what happens to a civilian airliner
in a civil air corridor is a public matter and lies completely within the public interest,
besides which the west has already made it quite clear that if any aspect of it fingers
Russia they will be more than happy to disclose it.
Ergo, any cop-out like "classified
for reasons of national security" will be taken by all the reasonable adults as an admission
that Ukraine is on the hook for it but its benefactors have decided to protect it once more.
Both MI5 and MI6 are intelligence services, but MI5 works within the UK while MI6 is
international on the UK's behalf.
…"They must be nuts," Joerg Forbrig, a senior program officer for central and eastern
Europe at the Berlin bureau of the German Marshall Fund of the US think tank, said. "It's
a very dangerous proposal and will be seen as a provocation by the separatists and the Russians."…
…"They must be nuts," Joerg Forbrig, a senior program officer for central and eastern
Europe at the Berlin bureau of the German Marshall Fund of the US think tank, said. "It's
a very dangerous proposal and will be seen as a provocation by the separatists and the Russians."…
…The director of the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels,
Fredrik Erixon, warned against sending armed teams into eastern Ukraine to search for victims.
"There's nothing normal in east Ukraine right now," Erixon said. "Small events can trigger
very large reactions from the rebels and the Russian government."…"
marknesop, July 26, 2014 at 9:26 am
I imagine the hunger to "find out what happened and bring those who did it to justice" will
dry right up the closer it gets to undeniable that the Ukrainians did it. The narrative
is already drifting toward "we may never know". Convenient.
As long as we never know, world opinion will always trend toward Russia being responsible.
But few ever demand that the USA reveal the evidence which allegedly informs its confident assertions.
The State Department's insistence that Russia is shelling Ukraine across the border is an
excellent example, although it would certainly not be undeserved were it true.
Note the title: "To prevent
further Russian aggression toward Ukraine and other sovereign
states in Europe and Eurasia, and for other purposes." (My bolding)
Thus we slither further towards the abyss, as if we still don't know why 1914 happened.
Here's a blast from the past:
"The King [George V], mindful of his position as a constitutional monarch, made no
public declarations about the situation in Europe in the lead-up to the conflict.
But in the newly-disclosed meeting, the King informed Sir Edward it was "absolutely essential"
Britain go to war in order to prevent Germany from achieving "complete domination of this
country".
When Sir Edward said the Cabinet had yet to find a justifiable reason to enter the
conflict, the King replied: "You have got to find a reason, Grey."
At the same time, the German General Staff thought they had a 'window of opportunity', because
one or two years later, France's and Russia's military would've become too strong.
When will they – our politicians and media – ever learn?
There is much that supports it being a failed false flag, but like you, I find it hard to imagine
even the cold-blooded gold-digging self-interested pricks who run the western democracies could
gamble with non-invested people's lives; even Operation Northwoods, although it involved a provocation
using an airliner, would have – if the op had ever been run – resulted in the destruction of
an empty plane. It does serve well, though, to illustrate how prevalent is propaganda in the
modern western news and that everything it tells you must be critically examined for the possibility
it is a lie. It has gone from more or less 100% reporting of what happened to more or less 100%
attempted influence of perceptions and manipulation, and is not ever to be trusted.
This new
reality comports well with the impression a month ago of a determined, purposeful, steely-eyed
Ukrainian citizen army going about its business coolly and professionally as it plucks out the
cancer within, to today's impression of confused peasants with straw in their hair who just
made an innocent mistake because they had too little experience to master the technology with
which they had been entrusted. The press adjusts to the discrepancy between the savage brutes
on the Russian side of the border who deliberately and with malice aforethought shot down a
planeload of civilians to the confused and remorseful boys who accidentally unleashed a catastrophe
without even blinking.
The West's new policy of putting Russia on the defensive, and forcing it to abandon its traditional
interests in neighbouring countries such as Ukraine, is fuelled by showmanship rather than geopolitical
calculations.
Earlier this year, Christopher Clark, author of The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in
1914, said: 'Looking at the current crisis in Crimea, there is only one sleepwalker – Vladimir
Putin.' Clark's use of the term 'sleepwalkers' is a reference to the thoughtless manner in which
political leaders of the early twentieth century took decisions that unleashed a chain of events
culminating in the First World War.
Sadly, Clark is wrong to say Putin is the only sleepwalker today. Sleepwalkers are also haunting
the chancelleries and foreign offices of Western capitals. A culture of posturing, grandstanding
and playing to the media has distracted the political elites of Europe and America from developing
any kind of balanced assessment of their geopolitical interests. In recent years, showcasing interventionist
diplomacy in Libya and Syria has led to a series of blowbacks for the West. Having indirectly encouraged
the emergence of a new generation of jihadists in Syria, Western governments now turn their attentions
towards destabilising the regions around Russia. The West's new policy of putting Russia on
the defensive, and forcing it to abandon its traditional interests in neighbouring countries such
as Ukraine, is fuelled by showmanship rather than geopolitical calculations. That is why time
and again the EU blows hot and cold on Russia, refraining from doing anything more than the going-through-the-motions
of talking about and imposing sanctions. London and Washington often insist that more stringent
measures should be taken against Russia – but ideally by others.
But whatever the motives of the various powers is diplomatic re-enactment of the Cold War era
could mutate into a more serious conflict. Having sleepwalked into Libya and Syria, what is to stop
London and Washington from doing the same thing in Ukraine? Certainly the downing of Malaysia Airlines
Flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine, and the political and diplomatic reaction to that tragedy, indicates
that such an event can serve as a catalyst for turning political wrangling into a more dangerous
show of force.
The speed with which the Western media and governments have assigned all blame for the MH17
tragedy to Putin suggests that powerful institutions are unaware of the dangers of so casually escalating
such a conflict. Numerous Western media outlets have claimed that the downing of MH17 bears
an uncanny resemblance to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Others have drawn an analogy between
MH17 and the sinking of the British passenger ship Lusitania during the First World War,
which led to the entry of America into the global conflict of 1914-1918. Many are now asking if
July 2014, with the downing of MH17 and the rising tensions in the east of Europe and elsewhere,
is a repeat of July 1914, when, a few weeks after the assassination of Ferdinand, global war broke
out.
As we head towards the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War, it is understandable that
the tragedy of Flight MH17 is looked upon by some as our Franz Ferdinand moment. In one sense,
this tragedy does invite comparisons with the assassination of Ferdinand. In both cases, neither
the governments nor the public seemed to be aware of the ease with which diplomatic rivalry can
turn into a bloody conflict. So today it seems that the leaders of the West have not actually thought
about the consequences of prodding Russia to the point where it feels forced to react.
Dominance in world MSM is like air superiority in conventional war: it essentially determine that
initial stage of the any hostile engagement. Russia lost propaganda war over MH17 with the score 100:1.
With the one being alternative Internet sites which did not bought Washington's fairy tale. The key
question: why SU-25 flied so close to Malaysian airline just before the tragedy was successfully suppressed.
These good people have stated that they have a very equipped and advanced laboratory, and it
is for this reason "black boxes" should be analysed in Great Britain (under watchful eyes of MI-6
and American special services) there. Within 24 hours you will see the first results. It's been
48 hours. No interesting statements from Farnborough have been reported. Or give me a link.
In general it is extremely convenient for the Americans. Shoot down any plane, using somebody
else hands and generally do whatever corresponds to "defense of the USA national interests". Just
don't leave too much evidence. In any case black boxes will be changed is some Farnborough. As I
wrote immediately after the disaster, there is no need for any evidence, Just switch on microphones
in controlled MSM and to put pressure on the allies to twist their hands. Something like we halped
you with the "Marshall plan", now its' your time to help us, etc. You should help ius in our Holy
struggle against Evil Empire.
Oh, and here is another interesting know-how about Washington Obcom methods of operation in case
of MH17. They don't want to answer on any question presented by Russia (I explained BEFORE why this
line of behaviour will be adopted, and can provide corresponding link). The strategy is not to give
any substantial official information, because it will be deliberately false and the USA can be caught
legally later. Let's use professionals from MSM to muddle the water.
In short, Washington Obcom adopted the following strategy: to produce some reports in the Internet
about MH17 crash. And then to refer to their own reports as evidence. This is kind of "news laundering",
but unlike financial money laundering it does not entail any legal responsibility. So Washington
Obcom assumes a noble position "I accuse", but the burden of proving the accusation is placed on
the accused. "Let him defend himself. And while he try to counter absurd and unfair accusations,
I will achieve everything I want to archive from this tragedy in any case"
It looks like strong economic sanctions are coming from the EU as
Grieving Dutch minister made Europe re-think Russia sanctions. Previous sanctions on Iran had hurt
EU economic growth, since trade is a two-way street, helping to slow
EU GDP growth
to 1.3%. These new sanctions, if enacted, might put it in negative territory. That represent distinct
advantage for the US, slowing the major rival economy
Until that meeting on Tuesday, Europe had trailed the United States in imposing economic sanctions
to pressure Moscow into working to defuse the eight-month crisis in Ukraine in which hundreds of
people have been killed.
Many governments were reluctant to antagonize a major energy supplier. Concern over the cost
to Europe's convalescent economy of fraying the vast network of industrial and business links with
Russia also weighed heavily.
Intense lobbying by Washington, including a warning by President Barack Obama that the plane
downing should be "a wake up call for Europe", had done little to change that mentality.
But like a supportive family, EU partners rallied around the bereaved Dutch, putting national
economic interests aside and for the first time going beyond asset freezes and visa bans on individuals
to envisage curbs on entire sectors of the Russian economy that could turn the screw on President
Vladimir Putin.
Gruesome images of bodies strewn across fields after the downing of flight MH17 appear to have
persuaded some of the opponents of sanctions to take a more decisive, if painful, stand against
Russian detribalization of Ukraine.
The Ministry of foreign Affairs of Russia stated that introducing additional sanctions against
Russia, the European Union threatened the international cooperation in the field of security.
"Once again, by accepting Washington on the issue of additional anti-Russian sanctions, the
EU has acted as a "non-commissioned officer's widow", - is spoken in the comment of the Russian
Foreign Ministry.
According to the Russian foreign Ministry, the EU took a course on the curtailing cooperation
with Russia, including on issues such as combating terrorism and organized crime.
"We are sure that such decisions will be enthusiastically embraced international terrorist international.
What they failed in the last decades, is to drive a wedge into the ranks of the international community
is easily accomplished by Brussel", - continues the Russian foreign Ministry.
The EU previously published the extended sanctions list, which included 15 persons from Russia
and Ukraine, including the head of the FSB Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the foreign intelligence
Service Mikhail Fradkov, security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, Deputy Secretary of the security
Council of Russia Rashid Nurgaliev, President of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov and the Governor of Krasnodar
region Alexander Tkachev.
The EU believes that they have played a role in undermining the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
A new extension of the sanctions was a result of the collapse under Donetsk Malaysian "Boeing".
"For the liberation of the Crimea" the Defendants in the list of banned entry to the EU countries.
Their accounts in European banks, if any, will freeze.
In total now in the "black list" of the EU are 87 physical and 20 legal persons
"At the same time the European Union finally sat down "on needle" of Washington and Kyiv
fairy tales about the events taking place in Ukraine, depriving themselves of alternative and
objective source of information," says the foreign Ministry, meaning, probably, the official
position of Moscow.
In the EU explain sanctions against heads of the FSB, the SVR, and members of the security Council
to the fact that they participated in the development policy of the Russian government, threatening
territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine".
The same wording was used against a state Duma Deputy from LDPR Mikhail Degtyarev. In addition,
it is stated that he announced the opening in Moscow of the Embassy of the self-proclaimed Donetsk
national Republic.
About two regional leaders - Ramzan Kadyrov and Alexander Tkachev said that they both received
a medal "For liberation of the Crimea". In addition, it is mentioned that Kadyrov June 1, stated
his readiness to send to Ukraine 74 thousand Chechen volunteers, and Tkachev was one of the first
who expressed their support to the new Crimean leadership.
Washington has claimed that Moscow is 'culpable' in the Malaysian plane crash in Ukraine, as it
was Russian authorities that gave the rebels heavy weapons and training. However, the claim was
only backed up by reports in social media.
"We've seen that there were heavy weapons moved
from Russia to Ukraine, that they have moved into the hands of separatist leaders,"
said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. "And according to social media reports, those weapons
include the SA-11 [Buk missile] system."
Once again citing "some social media reports," Earnest added that Russia trained the
self-defense forces operating in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
"We do know that it was an SA-11 [Buk missile] system that was in the hands of separatists
that brought down the Malaysian airliner last week. We know that Russia had been involved in training
separatists to use that system."
He added that the White House also knows that the Malaysia Airlines jet was brought down by a
missile that was fired from the ground in an area "that was controlled by separatists and in
an area where the Ukrainians themselves were not actually operating anti-aircraft weapons at that
time."
"So that is why we have concluded that Vladimir Putin and the Russians are culpable to this
tragedy… They have been responsible for supplying the terrorists with these -- or the separatists
with these weapons."
Earnest said he could not provide the latest intelligence materials, nor speak for the US intelligence
service. However, he claimed that the US authorities have proof that Russia fired "heavy weapons"
at Kiev troops.
"According to some social media reports but also to some intelligence assessments that have
been released by the intelligence community, reports that there has been firing of Russian heavy
weapons from the Russian side of the border at Ukrainian military personnel," the state department
spokesperson said.
Well, I am still running around, but while in the car I watched some rather interesting shows
on Russian TV including one called "Politics with Peter Tolstoi" who had a bunch of interesting
guests talking about the issue of MH17 shot down over Novorussia. Here again, I got very little
time, are some bullet-points of some of what they said:
1) MH17 was most likely not shot down by a Buk but by an R-60M air-to-air missile shot from a
Ukie Su-25 which has a non-pressurized cockpit (being a close air support aircraft) but whose engines
can easily bring him that high up and whose pilot can breathe oxygen through a mask. At such altitudes,
however, the Su-25 is rather slow, but that lack of speed is easily compensated by the speed of
the R-60M air-to-air missile whose ideal engagement distant is 3-5km which is *exactly* how far
the Su-25 was from MH17. The main evidence that it was an R-60M missile which hit MH17 is in the
radar signal which shows that the aircraft was not ripped into shreds as would be the case with
the massive warhead of the Buk SAM, and the fact that even on the ground the body of the plane does
not appear to be shredded the way a Buk warhead would.
2) The reason why the Ukie SBU immediately seized the recording of the conversations between
the Kiev ATC and MH17 is because the so-called "black boxes" ended up in Resistance hands.
The reason why Holland agreed to have the British "decode" these recorders was because they were
told so by the USA. The Brits will now let the NSA falsify the data and that falsification will
be coordinated with the SBU in Kiev which will eventually release the recordings who will, surprise
surprise, full "confirm" the "authenticity" of the NSA-doctored recordings from the UK. Formally,
it will be the Dutch which will announce it all in order to better hide the US/UK role in all this.
3) Besides the Russians and the Americans, the Europeans also know what happened (I can personally
confirm that I know for a fact that several European countries have their own monitoring systems
which observe everything West of the Urals. The Saker)
4) Several guests said that they believed that since the MH17 false flag is turning into a flop,
the next step will be to blow up a Ukie nuclear plant and blame Russia.
5) Banderastan has apparently signed 8 agreements with NATO to hold joint exercises in the Ukraine.
Most of them are scheduled for September 1st, the date at which Poroshenko has promised to be finished
with the repression of the Donbass.
6) One guest declared that he has it from a very solid source in the USA that MH17 was planned
by the USA and that the Ukies botched the execution. The plan was for the aircraft to fall
into the Rostov region of Russia.
7) One idea which was floated around again is this: to declare that unless the atrocities in
the Donbass stop, Russia will recognize the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics. The idea here is to say
that IF these republics are recognized, then Russia could then do the same as in Abkhazia and South
Ossetia i.e., send in as many military forces as needed to stop the aggression. In terms of international
law, this would not be the same as breaching the borders of the Ukraine. Besides, it would mean
to exactly the same for Novorussia as the US/NATO are officially doing for the Wahabi insurgency
in Syria or what the US did in Kosovo.
8) There was a consensus amongst the guests that future sanctions against Russia are absolutely
inevitable simply because the USA is dead set on this idea. However, the Russians are also
sure that these sanction won't bite much and that as long as Russia does not give the US a reason
for force the EU to cut itself off the Russian energy supply no real sanctions will be applied.
9) All the guests agreed that Russian should continue to provide covert military and over political
aid to Novorussia.
In other news tonight, Russian sources are reporting at least two major defeats for the Ukie
forces including one near the town of Georgievka near the Lugansk Airport (still held by the Ukies,
but surrounded) were the Ukies lost 30 soliders and several armored vehicles. The Ukie death squad
"Donbass" (which is the past had already been completely wiped out twice) is again surrounded near
Donetsk.
That's it Just wanted to update you. Now I got to hit the road again.
See you all later.
The Saker
Anonymous Andrew
Hey I just noticed this.
Count the number of missiles on the BUK TELAR behind infamous #312 in this picture.
Yes, Ukraine deployed it with just three missiles, and its the one on the middle right missing.
Now look at the infamous video in Luhansk/Krasnodon/Krasnoarmiisk/Wherever of the BUK TELAR
on its incredible adventure
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L4HJmev5xg0
Again, just three missiles, and the one on the middle right is missing.
No one is claiming Ukraine fired a BUK missile near Soledar when the first picture was taken.
So apparently sometimes, these units are not deployed with a full complement of missiles.
There is a trite saying "An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." So just because
a BUK TELAR only has three missiles on it, this is only evidence that at the time the photo/video
was taken, the unit only had three missiles. It does not tell you if it once had a fourth, or
if one missile was fired.
Anonymous
"A BUK missile ripping a 777 apart." is total nonsense...Got it? Saker and all the other
people here, you need to stick to the facts and some common sense to retain credibility. Judging
from the pictures posted on the internet, it does seem very likely that MH17 was hit by shrapnel.
It has also been claimed that a BUK missile causes very different patterns of shrapnel damage
as compared to an air-to-air missile, and that the patterns appearing on the aircraft parts
are consistent with a BUK missile.
Conclusion: The investigation will probably come to the result that it was a BUK missile
that brought down MH17. This finding will be difficult or impossible to refute. That's
what this blog and all other friends of Russia need to be prepared for. Forcefully bringing
any other theories to the fore only has the potential of damaging the cause.
As of yesterday, RT carried a commentary arguing convincingly, in my opinion, that MH17,
if shot down by the rebels, was legal as a form of collateral damage in a civil war situation
provided that it was not intentional. As the shoot-down most probably was not intentional such
a position is much more defensible than trying to formulate grand theories that most likely
will fall apart like a house of cards. If, but only if, proof appears that the Ukies did it,
then such a finding can still be exploited to the fullest."
These ZPC/NWO web sayanim come up with all sorts of clever ways to sell their propaganda.
The message being sold in all that "authoritative" methane is that it was a Buk missile that
brought down the airliner. Any evidence of an aircraft launched missile has to be discredited
because the ZPC/NWO will not be able to manipulate that evidence to exonerate themselves. There
is no way to avoid taking the rap once it's shown it was aircraft attack that shot down the
airliner.
вот так
Anonymous
Plan not just for downing of aircraft in cauldron, for Junta forces to be able to assist
trapped forces there.
But to get opposition labelled terrorists, and have NATO go in, to set up a 'temporary' (permanent)
camp right there next to the border, so that they could seal the border permanently. This is
actually a central planning feature, permanent sealing of border. (or permeable only for the
right people)
Anonymous said...
Once again re capabilities of the SU-25:
The Ukraine converted some of their SU-25's to SU-25M1, which has a ceiling of 10,000 meters.
From Wikipedia: Ukrainian Air Force modernized two types of the Su-25, one of them is Su-25M1
and Su-25UBM1.[76]
From Wikipedia: "2 Su-25 and 1 Su-25M1 were shot down in clashes in southeast
Ukraine. One damaged and captured by pro-Russian forces.[5] "
According to Russian sources,[which?] practical engagement range is about 4,000 m (4,400
yd), although "brochure range" is 8 km (5.0 mi) at high altitude
So it is quite possible a Ukraine SU-25M1 or other variant attacked MH17 with a R60 missile,
as the Russians suggest.
Until this past Monday, the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 on July 17th, 2014, was
a potential game changer for global geopolitics and the New Cold War. However, a funny thing happened
on the way to the Kremlin…
In this report, we will lay out the facts based on a wide breadth of available information and
data surrounding MH17. We will also present and give critique to Washington and Kiev's "mountain
of evidence" that has saturated US and European-based media coverage since the incident took place.
21WIRE has compiled this report with the help of many contributors and references from English-speaking
media, as well as material translated from Russian and Ukrainian media sources, along with other
historical references to provide context. Our objective is to get as close to the truth as possible.
Although many revelations will appear to be self-evident, we still encourage the public to draw
there own conclusions regarding this pivotal event.
There are other well-known anomalies surrounding this event
which have been covered at 21WIRE, as well as
connections to MH370, but for the purposes of this investigation we will focus on both factual
and speculative evidence brought forth by the US, Ukraine and Russia.
As we will clearly demonstrate, the only wild conspiracy theories being pushed right
now, are those coming out of the US State Department, and the government in Kiev, Ukraine, which
are being repeated by CNN, BBC, FOX-NewsCorp, ABC, CBS and NBC…
The Brink of War
Last Monday morning was not a pleasant one for the US State Department. Russian officials surprised
Washington and its NATO partners when it released all available satellite imagery and air traffic
control data which was recorded in and around the final minutes of Flight MH17 – and presented it
to the world media on live television. The data painted a very different picture, drawing contrasting
conclusions to what Washington and Kiev officials had been disseminating via western media since
July 17th. Following their presentation, Moscow handed its findings – air traffic data and time
stamped satellite imagery – to European authorities. We will review those findings in detail later
in this report. In stark contrast, US officials have been reluctant to do the same. Is Washington
willing to share any object data or evidence to the public, or is it only interested in sharing
that which somehow fits into the same predetermined narrative it stood by on July 17th, one which
already assigned guilt to both rebel fighters in eastern Ukraine and Russia?
We hope that political leaders and media organizations in the US and Europe will take the time
to consider all available information, rather than simply repeat and spin what is bouncing around
the media echo chamber. It's also crucial to understand the geopolitical context in which this incident
has occurred in order to discover who really possessed the motive, and the means to destroy this
passenger aircraft, and which parties stand to benefit most from such an international incident.
After reviewing the evidence, all indicators points to the downing of MH17 as a highly coordinated,
but failed false flag
event.
MH17: A Doomed Flight Path
A Malaysian Airlines spokesman has already confirmed that, for some unknown reason,
Kiev-based Ukrainian Air Traffic Control (ATC) ordered MH17 off of its original flight path along
the international air route, known as L980.
Most likely, this order was given to pilots while MH17 was still in Polish air space. L980 is
one of the most popular and most congested air routes in the world, as well as a key link between
major international hubs in Europe, like London Heathrow, Amsterdam Schiphol, and Frankfurt, and
Asian destinations, like Singapore, Mumbai, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur.
As MH17 moved into Ukrainian air space, it was moved by ATC Kiev approximately 200 miles north –
putting it on a new course, heading directly into a war zone, a well-know dangerous area by now
– one that's hosted a number of downed military craft over the previous 3 weeks.
Robert Mark, a commercial pilot and editor of Aviation International News
Safety magazine, confirmed that most Malaysia Airlines flights from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur
would normally travel along a route significantly further south than the route MH17 was diverted
onto. Data on all airline flight records can be found
here.
The BBC reported
on July 17th: "Ukraine's SBU security service has confiscated recordings of conversations
between Ukrainian air traffic control officers and the crew of the doomed airliner, a source in
Kiev has told Interfax news agency."
Independent investigators are worried that ATC audio records of the MH17 flight appear to have
been confiscated by the Kiev government. No reason has been given for this loss of transparency,
but not a word from Washington regarding this cover-up of crucial evidence.
Did this order to change the flight path come from the Ukrainian authorities? Was the pilot instructed
to change course? To be sure, the order to change the flight path did not come from Eurocontrol,
but rather from ATC in Kiev.
Clue: British media run interference by conjuring a "Storm"
Soon after the incident, British news outlets began floating the story - without evidence, that
MH17 was diverted to "avoid thunderstorms in southern Ukraine". This was also placed on
Wikipedia
at the same time. Nico Voorbach, who is Dutch, is president of the
European Cockpit Association,
and was the man used to nudge out this talking point. Voorbach casually slides this crucial fabrication
out there, telling The Guardian of all papers, ""I heard that MH17 was diverting from some
showers as there were thunderclouds".
The only problem is that Malaysian Airlines immediately refuted this in a report from
Malaysia News:
"MAS operations director Captain Izham Ismail has also refuted claims that heavy
weather led to MH17 changing its flight plan.
"There were no reports from the pilot to suggest that this was the case," Izham said.
What is significant, however, is that the Western media acknowledged that the change in the flight
path did occur, and the that "heavy weather" narrative is a fabrication.
"The route over Ukrainian airspace where the incident occurred is commonly used for Europe to
Asia flights. A flight from a different carrier was on the same route at the time of the
MH17 incident, as were a number of other flights from other carriers in the days and weeks before.
Eurocontrol maintains records of all flights across European airspace, including those across Ukraine."
"What this statement confirms is that the MH17 's "usual flight path" was similar to the flight
paths of some 150 international flights which cross Eastern Ukraine on a daily basis. According
to Malaysian Airlines "The usual flight route [across the sea of Azov] was earlier declared
safe by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. The International Air Transportation
Association has stated that the airspace the aircraft was traversing was not subject to
restrictions (that approved flight path is indicated in the maps below)."
The regular flight path of MH17 (and other international flights) over a period of ten
days prior to July 17th ( day of the disaster), crossing Eastern Ukraine in a southeasterly
direction is across the Sea of Azov.
The
Times of India reported this: "Minutes before the crash caused by a missile strike, the AI pilots
had also heard the controller give the Malaysian aircraft MH17 what is called "a direct routing".
This permits an aircraft to fly straight, instead of tracking the regular route which is generally
a zig-zag track that goes from one ground-based navigation aid or way point to another. "Direct
routing saves fuel and time and is preferred by pilots. In this case, it proved fatal," said an
airline source."
UPDATE TBC:A number of bloggers have reported that the past flights on
FlightRadar and
FlightAware were changed between July 24-25th, the new "old flights" were placed over the Donetsk
People's Republic instead of the flights going further south. This does not jibe with what was reported
last week by researcher
Vagelis Karmiros using data from flight-tracking website Flightaware and published on a number
established sites like
Zero Hedge. Stay tuned here for updates.
The Event
The fatal event occurred somewhere in the interval between 17:21:28
and 17:22:30 Moscow Time.The exact time of the crash is believed to be at 5:23pm.
The last available geographic coordinates can be found here on Flight Radar24: Weather and Visibility Factor
Kiev-based air traffic controllers not only led MH17 right over its alleged 'target zone'
in Eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region, but also helped make it visible.
Although weather data online is all but unavailable for the area of Donetsk, Ukraine for July
17th, conditions are evident by numerous videos depicting the crash and crash site in the aftermath
- it was cloudy and overcast, with more visibility above the cloud canopy. This factor is important
because at its cruising altitude of 33,000 feet (10,000 meters), the airliner would not be visible
from the ground in the rebel-held area where Washington is insisting a SAM missile was launched.
Why Kiev air traffic controllers order MH17 to suddenly drop its altitude, from 35,000 feet to 33,000
feet, just before the plane's demise is unknown for sure, but it would have been near impossible
for the alleged rebel gunman occupying this relatively small rebel-held patch of land to make a
visual sighting of MH17 and acquire the target during the 1-2 minute window they would have had
(assuming they were even in possession of the BUK missile system).
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was cruising just 1,000 feet above restricted airspacewhen
it was struck by a missile in Ukraine's Donetsk region, according to aviation and intelligence
officials.
To date, Kiev has refused to acknowledge or explain why the plane was moved into position in this
way. Moreover, Interfax news agency reported that Ukraine's SBU security service confiscated recordings
of conversations between Ukrainian air traffic control officers and the crew immediately after the
incident.
The probability that this is all an 'unfortunate coincidence' reduces to near
zero when one considers the air traffic data and Kiev's denial of the close proximity of its Ukrainian
SU-25 fighter jet in pursuit of MH17 minutes before the crash (see 'Aircraft in the Vicinity' below).
Small Rebel Target Window
Much has been made by the US and its media of MH17 being shot down and crashing in "the
rebel-held area", but few are aware of just how small the said area actually is. The Ukrainian
military had already isolated the rebel area which Kiev and Washington insist a rebel-controlled
BUK SAM missile battery had fired on the passenger jet. The actual size of this rebel-held patch
is only 40-50 miles wide, with MH17 approaching on a southeastern route over Horlivka,
the frontline of this rebel-held zone, towards Snezhnoye (Snizhne). Cruising at 58o mph (933 kmph),
MH17 would have only been visible for a very short time – just over 1 minute (if Kiev had not ordered
MH17 to alter its course and altitude then it would not have been visible at all), from the vantage
point of the alleged rebel firing position. According the
Jane's Defense, the alleged
cluprit – an SA-11 (NATO code name) or 'BUK' missile system, requires 5 minutes set-up active targeting,
followed by an additional 22 seconds 'reaction time' for target acquisition and firing. As the MH17
was only visible for 70 seconds above this rebel-held area surrounding Grabovo, unless the alleged
rebel firing position was specifically tracking MH17 long before it entered the rebel-held airspace
and could distinguish it from other military civilian aircraft also in the general vicinity, Washington's
theory and Kiev's accusation – that rebels shot down this aircraft becomes even weaker.
Considering these factors, the probability increases greatly that targeting MH17 would have had
to be premeditated far in advance of the 70 seconds it was visible above this particular rebel-held
area.
Russian Satellite Data and Public Presentation
On Monday, the Russian government, with almost every major global media outlet in attendance,
released all of its air traffic data and satellite imaging data (in fact, only part of it) – all
verifiable, including time stamps and supporting data. The entire content of the presentation was
also handed over to the European authorities. The conclusions to be drawn from this are stunning,
to say the least. Despite the public release of this information, US and British media outlets did
report back to its people on these findings. They are as follows:
Minutes before the downing of MH17, the plane made a mysterious 'Left Turn'
as it flew over the Donetsk areaat approximately 5:20pm Moscow time, making a
sharp 14km deviation, before attempting to regain its previous course before dropping altitude disappearing
from radar at 5:23pm. As we previously pointed out, air traffic controllers in Kiev had already
diverted MH17 200 miles further north into the target zone, so the question remains: was Kiev ATC
also responsible for this final, fatal diversion, or is there another reason for this unusual turn
(see 'Mysterious Left Turn', below)?
According to clear satellite images provided, on July 16th, the Ukrainian Army positioned
3-4 anti-aircraft BUK M1 SAM missile batteries close to Donetsk. These systems included
full launching, loading and radio location units, located in the immediate vicinity of the MH17
crash site. One system was placed approximately 8km northwest of Lugansk. In addition, a radio location
system for these Ukrainian Army missile batteries is situated 5km north of Donetsk. On July 17th,
the day of the incident, these batteries were moved to a position 8km south of Shahktyorsk.
In addition to this, two other radio location units are also identified in the immediate vicinity.
These SAM systems had a range of 35km distance, and 25km altitude.
From July 18th, after the downing of MH17, Kiev's BUK launchers were then moved away
from the firing zone.
Unlike rebel fighters, the Ukrainian military is in possession of some 27 BUK missile
systems capable of bringing down high-flying jets, and forensic satellite imagery places at least
3 of their launchers in the Donetsk region on the day of this tragedy. Yet, Washington and NATO
will not inquire about the possibility that any of these system had targeted MH17.
Watch the official video here:
This is a definitive smoking gun: why did the Ukrainian Army move these short-range
anti-aircraft SAM missile batteries into position on July 16-17th – to an interior region
of East Ukraine where it's known that the rebel resistance possess no air crafts whatsoever? Not
surprisingly, both the US and Kiev have not answered that difficult question, perhaps for obvious
reasons.
In addition, the Ukrainian Army's radio location traffic near Donetsk peaked on the 16th and
17th, including a total of 9 separate radio location systems active. On the 18th and 19th of July,
radio location traffic from these stations dropped sharply, down to 4 stations. If, as Washington/Kiev
claims, rebels fired a BUK missile at MH17, then the rebel radar location signals would be clearly
noted and verifiable on the day; only, they are not.
All Aircraft in the Vicinity
Between 5pm-6pm Moscow Time on July 17th, the following aircraft have been identified
in the general vicinity of MH17 on its course heading to its fatal destination of Grabovo:
1. Boeing 772 – traveling southeast from Copenhagen to Singapore at 5:17pm
2. Boeing 778 – traveling southeast from Paris to Taipei at 5:24pm
3. Boeing 778 – traveling northwest from Delhi to Birmingham circa 5:20pm
4. Boeing 777 – Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 at 5:17pm 5. Su-25 Ukrainian Fighter Jet appears on radar, trailing MH17 at same altitude, est. 4km
behind it at 5:21pm
Note: the pilots and passengers of Singapore Airlines Flight SIA351were close enough to have visually observed, at high altitude, the demise of MH17.
At 5:20pm MH17 began to abruptly lose speed, eventually slowing to 124mph (200kmph). At this
time, a Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jet appears on ATC radar and trailing MH17 on the
same flight path approximately 2-3km behind MH17, and at the same altitude – only minutes before
MH17 disappeared on radar. The Su-25 would not have been visible on ATC radar before it broke the
ATC long-range standby radar tracking ceiling of 5km in altitude. Civilian ATC radar would not be
able to identify this Su-25 as military because no secondary detection system is mounted – typical
for military aircraft. Note also that the Su-25 is armed with air-to-air missiles with a range of
5km-12km. Over the next four minutes, the Ukrainian fighter remained in the area.
Another Smoking Gun: Kiev government officials insisted on July 17th that, "No
military aircraft were available in the region". Based on available data detailed above, this appears
to be a lie, indicating that a cover-up was taking place.
Again, it's important to note here that at the moment when MH17 was allegedly was hit for the
first time, at around 5:23pm Moscow time, the passenger jet was also within the range of several
Ukrainian BUK batteries deployed close to Donetsk and as well as the Ukrainian Army's BUK system
positioned on the day just 8km south of Shakhterskoye, only a few miles from the
eventual crash site at Grabovo.
IMAGE: A Ukrainian military Su-25 fighter jet carries air-to-air missiles.
MH17′s Mysterious Left Turn
On passing glance, this seemingly minor, yet unexplained event doesn't appear to be significant,
but as is often the case, the devil is in the detail.
Again, was Kiev ATC also responsible for MH17′s final and fatal diversion from its course, or
is there another reason for what appears to be an evasive maneuver?
One very real possibility for MH17 losing being diverted 14km to the left is that its GPS or
navigation system was being jammed. US-NATO forces happened to be conducting an electronic warfare
exercise in the Black Sea on July 17th (see 'SEA BREEZE 2014′, below). In addition to this possibility,
all Boeing jets (except Germany's Lufthansa fleet) are equipped with a remote override that can
be accessed by authorities in certain foreign countries, one being the United States. Although not
publicly acknowledged until recently, Boeing Uninterruptible Autopilot (BUAP) systems have been
standard since the late 1990′s, apparently designed to take control of a commercial aircraft away
from the pilot or flight crew, chiefly in the event of a terrorist incident.
Another possible explanation for this crucial event in the timeline is that MH17 was hit, or
damaged, taking an emergency 180º left turn for 14km, before disappearing completely off of radar.
This appears to be the case. On July 23rd,
Anna-News published an interview
with retired Russian Air Force colonel Aleksand Zhilin (Александр Жилин) a frequent
military commentator on Ukraine's Civil War.
"According to the colonel, at 16:19:45 (local time, and 5:19pm Moscow time), a Ukrainian
jet fighter targeted the Boeing with anair-to-air missileR-60.
The missile damaged the right engine of the Boeing. The Boeing was hit, but still managed to stay
in the air. However, in doing so, the Boeing turned 180 degrees to the left. It was at this moment
that the false flag attack started falling apart. According to Zhilin, part of the plan controlled
by the US with Ukrainian hands executing it was to have the Boeing crash past the southern frontline
by the Ukrainian-Russian border. Had the Boeing fallen there, securing the crash sites with the
troops in response to international pressure was on top of all else effectively to allow Kiev to
lift the encirclement of its brigades (currently pinned down by rebels) in the southern pocket by
the Russian border."
"When, however, the Boeing started to turn in the opposite direction and was still apparently
manageable, the US-Ukrainian headquarters of the special operation panicked and ordered the Buk
battery to destroy the plane in the air in order to pre-empt the possibility of the Boeing's emergency
landing. A Buk missile was fired and the plane was then finally destroyed."
21WIRE spoke to former Czech diplomat and political analyst, Vladimir Suchan, who
puts Zhilin's comments into context of what was happening militarily at the time of the crash. Suchan
explains, "If MH17 was hit right over the frontline over Snezhnoye, this would have placed the timing
and location of the intended downing and crash site to either the territory controlled by the Ukrainian
army, or much closer to the border between Russia and Ukraine where the "securing of the site" would
allow lifting the strategic encirclement of the Ukrainian troops in the south and thus, on top of
other objectives, saving Kiev's armed forces from its first major military defeat." (see 'Military
All-Out Offense' section below)
If, indeed MH17 was struck by an air-to-air missile at that time,
a distress call may have been sent to Kiev ATC, but as yet, Kiev officials may be reluctant to share,
or release the entirety of its communications from July 17th.
At the time of this report being filed at 21WIRE, a second source to verify this
testimony is not presently available. Zhilin's account certainly makes sense when
placed next to all ATC and satellite data released by Moscow. However, flight recorder information
and data from MH17′s black boxes would certainly be able to corroborate this timeline of events,
and one hopes that Great Britain's predetermined political stance against Russia does not prevent
Downing Street, or MI5 Intelligence Services from releasing the black box information in its entirety
and more importantly, a full and unedited disclosure to the media. More than likely, the BBC will
have first access to this release, and how the BBC report their findings will be very telling.
This account is also consistent with the location of key pieces of wreckage scattered over the
wider crash site radius. It shows M17 turning back on itself, after being struck initially. If this
was the final path, then it completely disapproves the US (US State Department) conspiracy theory
that a rebel-controlled BUK missile hit the plane head-on from Snezhnoye (Snizhne).
This U-turn then also helps explain why Kiev's first "leaked conversation of the rebels" (see 'Kiev's
Botch Social Media Audio' below) tried to place the rebel's BUK battery at a completely different
location in Debaltzevo, a few kilometers northwest of the main crash site at Grabovo.
However, that would not explain the U-turn, which they tried so much to conceal – for it points
to the Ukrainian jet fighter.
As part of their PR damage-control exercise, Washington released this Google Map-style graphic
on Tuesday July 22nd, illustrating its theory that the rebel missile battery was now located in
Snezhnoye:
Incredibly, Washington's latest evidence/theory, depicted above, put their alleged rebel firing
position in an entirely new spot – at Snezhnoye, and this now contradicts other 'social media' items
being held-up by John Kerry and President Obama in their "mountain of evidence" (see 'More Falsified
and Sloppy 'Evidence' Supplied by SBU', below).
The irony of this somehow escaped US State Dept. Deputy Spokesperson, Marie Harf
during her globally televised 'intelligence' briefing on Tuesday (see 'US Now in Full Retreat and
Damage-Control Mode', below).
Almost certainly, the US government already has a comprehensive communications, satellite and
radar data set which could either corroborate, or disprove what Russia has released. The fact that
Washington only has this Google graphic to offer to the public indicates that what it has…
may not be what it wants.
Whistleblower: A Spanish Air Traffic Controller in Kiev
All evidence pointing to a Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jet in the same frame as MH17, also
validates the testimony of 'Carlos', an ATC contractor in Kiev.
ETN received information from an air traffic controller (Borispol Airport) in Kiev on Malaysia
Airlines flight MH17:
"This Kiev air traffic controller is a citizen of Spain and was working in the Ukraine. He was taken
off duty as a civil air-traffic controller along with other foreigners immediately after a Malaysia
Airlines passenger aircraft was shot down over the Eastern Ukraine killing 295 passengers and crew
on board. The air traffic controller suggested in a private evaluation and basing it on military
sources in Kiev, that the Ukrainian military was behind this shoot down. Radar records were immediately
confiscated after it became clear a passenger jet was shot down. Military air traffic controllers
in internal communication acknowledged the military was involved, and some military chatter said
they did not know where the order to shoot down the plane originated from. Obviously it happened
after a series of errors, since the very same plane was escorted by two Ukrainian fighter jets until
3 minutes before it disappeared from radar."
Again, real mounting evidence which points to an obvious cover-up by Kiev and its NATO partners.
CSI: Flight MH17
Crime scene investigation is important, although reports to date from the crash site in Grabovo
do not inspire very much confidence that a thorough and independent forensic investigation will
be carried out, or that the chain of custody for evidence is being observed. The key evidence would
be ballistics, including pieces of shrapnel retrieved from the wreckage. It should be easy to determine
if they came from any of the following:
1. A bomb on board (this is still a possibility). 2. An air-to-air missile. 3. A surface-to-air missile.
After that, the autopsy of the bodies would reveal additional evidence about what really took
place on July 17th. A present, the majority of the remains are being handled by the Netherlands
government, and given their NATO involvement to date in the Ukrainian conflict, it's debatable whether
or not they would present any findings which do not square with Washington and Kiev's narrow, yet
ever-evolving narrative of the incident.
Finally, if MH17 was indeed shot down as a false flag provocation of war by either a Ukrainian
SU-25 fighter, or a Ukrainian Army BUK SAM – or both, as much of the hard evidence suggests, then
would Malaysia declare war on the Ukraine? Would the UN table a resolution backing
sanctions against Ukrainian officials in Kiev for their role in this international war crime?
US-NATO's Military Drill in the Black Sea Ended on July 17th
Russia's Satellite Data and Public Presentation on Monday July 21st has put Washington on its
back foot. The existence of this intelligence, now made public, along with other data in Russia's
possession, means that the Washington cannot show the real intelligence – which they too have. It's
no coincidence that US and NATO conducted a large-scale military and intelligence drill in the Black
Sea just south of Crimea named, SEA BREEZE 2014, which just so happened to end
on… July 17th. The drill included hundreds of US military specialists running 'war simulations'
in electronic warfare, data collection from a spy satellite, and 'monitoring' of all passenger aircraft
flying in the region. A massive drill – yet another improbable coincidence.
Another smoking gun: Is it a coincidence that the US had its new experimental
satellite positioned over Eastern Europe for 1-2 hours, and directly over Donetsk in eastern Ukraine
from 5:06pm – 5:21pm. Taking this fact into consideration, alongside the other
improbable 'coincidences', leads to an almost certain conclusion.
In addition to SEA BREEZE, both US and British armed forces had also scheduled a concurrent military
exercise, code named, Rapid Trident 2014, a NATO event which takes place annually
in and around the Ukraine, designed to "promote regional stability and security, strengthen partnership
capacity and foster trust while improving interoperability between the land forces of Ukraine, and
NATO and partner nations," according to the US Forces in Europe website. Since March, the Pentagon
has kept quiet regarding the number of US forces, and hardware assets expected to participate in
the maneuvers.
According to US Army spokesman Col. Steven Warren,Rapid Trident is
the only Ukraine military exercise the US planned to participate in this year, and it's main purpose
was, "To help the Ukrainian military improve its troops and weapons operability with NATO
forces."
Ukrainian Military All-Out Offensive Timed For July 18th
Three uncomfortable realities in Kiev were prevailing before the downing of MH17 on July 17th.
First, the troops were losing morale, and suffering defections and other serious
set-backs in an increasingly unpopular military theater of Eastern Ukraine. Kiev was losing the
PR war hearts and minds in the Ukraine and abroad.
After the downing of MH17, Kiev garnered huge public sympathy and support, and just so happened
to launch a massive offensive on July 18th, one which military analysts believe would have to have
been planned many weeks in advance – and could not just be a knee-jerk reaction to the MH17 tragedy
as government spokespersons in Kiev insist.
Secondly, they were losing the war. Behind the lines battle reports from
Igor Strelkov's blog
at the time confirms this all-out offensive at Snezhnoye by the Kiev military planners
against the People's Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk – allowing the Ukrainian Army to penetrate
deeper and deeper, in effect splitting Donetsk and Lugansk.
Vladimir Suchan adds, "After the loss of MH17 and some talk about "humanitarian ceasefire", the
Kiev regime launched three massive offensives from the north, the west (from Artemovsk, which included
a large tank attack) and in the south. Since it always takes some good time to prepare an offensive,
this had to be planned sufficiently ahead, though, with a view of the desperate situation for the
junta in the south, most likely at a very accelerated pace.
http://voicesevas.ru/news/yugo-vostok/2968-voyna-na-yugo-vostoke-onlayn-18072014-hronika-sobytiy-post-obnovlyaetsya.html
"In this regard, it is also very plausible that some hope was put on having the command of Novororrysia
paralyzed, busy and distracted over MH17. By all accounts, both the timing and location of the MH17
crash, has enabled a huge 'game changer' in terms of how this conflict was previously
going."
If the international community were indeed to connect the prospect of a false flag attack on
MH17 with the false flag attack by Maidan snipers back in February, and the attempted false flag
attack with the Odessa massacre, perhaps the Ukrainian Civil War could be abated, for the right
reasons.
As the US media juggernaut rolls ahead, there is still no sign of either Washington, London or
Brussels admitting that their partners in Kiev are massacring civilians in a brutal civil war…
Disturbing reports are also coming in about the Ukrainian Military dropping White Phosphorus
on civilian targets this week, as forces continue bombarding areas surrounding of Lugansk. Here
are two unconfirmed videos, possible evidence of unconventional chemical weapons being deployed
over several locations near Lugansk People's Republic of Novorossia, from July 20-21, 2014:
Thirdly, Kiev is going broke trying to fund what appears to be an ethnic cleansing
campaign in eastern Ukraine.
Sources from the Parliamentary
budget office in Kiev now confirm that as of August 1st, Kiev can't pay its military (who are,
in fact, waging war against its own people and calingl it 'anti-terror operations).
"To continue the anti-terrorist operation in eastern Ukraine, it is necessary to amend the state
budget and to find additional sources of its content. We do not have money to pay at least a cash
security to our military from August", stated Ukraine's Finance Minister Oleksandr Shlapak,
speaking in Parliament this week. According to Shlapak, funds previously provided by the state budget
for these purposes has been calculated for the period prior to July 1st, and continued operations
will require additional funds totaling 9 billion UAH ($1 billion). Infighting has
already begun, as MP's are now blaming the Ministry of Defense and army staff for corruption and
looting of money.
In the wake of the MH17 disaster, US and its NATO allies are responding with a renewed call for
more military aid to Kiev and to fast-track the Ukraine's membership into Washington's overseas
military surrogate, NATO. As an emergency response to "secure the crash site", NATO stalwart,
The Netherlands, are weighing up deploying NATO troops into the middle of this war zone. Such
a move could easily cascade into something much worse should another bizarre "accident" occur, or
some tragedy befalls Dutch troops inserted into the hot zone.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded with strong words of condemnation,
stating, "No matter what our Western counterparts tell us, we can see what's going on. As it
stands, NATO is blatantly building up its forces in Eastern Europe, including the Black Sea and
the Baltic Sea areas. Its operational and combat training activities are gaining in scale."
While
the US push Kiev eastwards to fight Washington's proxy war against Russia, the political and financial
situation in Kiev is rapidly falling apart.
Watch as a fist fight break out this week between Washington's new Neofascist partners
during a Parliament session in Kiev:
His resignation indicates that 'Yatz' may be falling out of favor with central planning in Washington,
and a sign of chaos still to come in the halls of Kiev's Parliament.
Made-up 'Evidence' From Washington and Kiev
The talking point shift by the US media on Tuesday July 22nd was an obvious reaction
to the Russian data dump. US media are now airing Washington DC's revised conspiracy theories.
Theory 1) "The rebels shot MH17 down by mistake", and Theory 2)
"Russia is responsible for creating the conditions for this tragedy". In reality, no evidence actually exists to date, other than anecdotal,
that the rebels in the east possess any 'BUK' surface-to-air missile systems (see Washington and
Kiev's 'BUK' Missile Evidence Debunked', below).
Close observers of Washington DC's media blitz can only be left with a feeling of embarrassment,
as the US State Department still clings to some semblance of continuity in the face of a total PR
meltdown. As late as July 22nd, the US State Department was still attempting to pass-off its 'evidence'
from social media (Twitter and YouTube), and backed-up by what it claims is "common sense", that
"clearly indicates Ukrainian militia shot down MH17″.
Since the incident on July 17th, the Kiev regime and US State Department have built their case
against Rebels in eastern Ukraine and Moscow, and even Vladimire Putin himself, on the following
items, which have all been thoroughly discredited by now:
1. The audio "tapes" issued by Kiev 2. A video and photos of BUK missile batteries issued by Kiev (of their own BUK missile
batteries) 3. Claims by Kiev and supported by the West, that Ukraine had "no military aircraft in the
air" at the time of the crash of the MH17 plane.
On
July 22nd, the Ukrainian President PetroPoroshenko (photo, left)
was forced to change Kiev's story - a damage-control exercise to the overwhelming evidence against
Ukraine. He has since reversed this position.
Suchan explains the western political media machine and its all-out effort to cast Russia and
Putin as international pariahs over the incident:
"What has been thus established is that Ukraine, as well as the US, the EU, NATO, and other Western
countries, have been systematically and grossly lying about evidence pertaining to the tragedy of
MH17, thus willfully – and bluntly, abusing the tragedy and the demise of the victims and the suffering
of their families for perverse political goals related to NATO expansionism and anti-Russian hysteria,
and 'Russophobia', in order to support an openly fascist regime in Kiev, whose objective is the
deliberate destruction of civilians and civilian infrastructure in east Ukraine."
"The smearing campaign has also been used to demonize and criminalize anti-fascism and
its resistance to a fascist dictatorship in Kiev, enrolled by Ukraine's criminal oligarchs."
Washington and Kiev's 'BUK' Missile Evidence Debunked
Immediately after the MH17 crash event on July 17th, the Ukrainian government in Kiev
quickly uploaded a brief YouTube video it purported to be 'evidence' of "a 'BUK' missile
system being moved" out of a rebel-held area near Donetsk. US State Department officials,
and every US media outlet, led by CNN, FOX, ABC, NBC and CBS, along with major US talk radio hosts
like Sean Hannity, immediately jumped on this 5 second YouTube video claiming it was, "Irrefutable
proof that a Russian-made BUK missile system was being moved away after it shot down MH17″. That
talking point began to cascade from media, and into public chatter. It seemed their job was all
but done.
Rupert
Murdoch's News Corporation newspaper , The Sun, always ready to take any pro-war
line to the extreme, led the 'conflict pornography' on news stands, intentionally inciting fear
and jingoism, doing what it always does: nudge British working class readers in a predetermined
direction and fuse public opinion among differing classes on divisive international issues. No surprise
then, as The Sun ran, "Putin's Missile" as its headline the next morning.
Similar covers and headlines were cloned across US and British media. Within hours of the news breaking
– and despite this blanket coverage, not one of these newspapers or TV broadcasters offered any
real evidence outside of anecdotal and wild speculation and conjectural theories.
Once again, we've witnessed world's most powerful, highly coordinated and synchronized propaganda
machine. Once it's set in motion, most western consumers are helpless to fend off it's relentless
repeating and universal coverage across hundreds of media outlets owned in most part by 5 US, and
2 British corporations.
A similar attempt was made by Washington and London last September, when US Secretary of State
John Kerry, along with then British Foreign Secretary William Hague,
presented their now infamous claim of 'open source evidence' (YouTube
videos) used to assign blame to the Syrian government for a chemical weapons attack against its
own people. Many of the photos
and videos were later proven to be faked and staged, and
'the gas' was made in Britain, and that 'chemical attack' was in fact staged by Syrian insurgents
still being supported by the US-British-Saudi-Qatari Axis.
Washington's initial 'BUK Missile' social media evidence seems to be rapidly
heading down the same memory hole as its Syria predecessor, and soon, it will not be mentioned again
by any US official. The speed at which it was released after the crash, and the fact that falsified
audio, video, and photos have been intentionally released by the Kiev government in the wake of
such a tragedy, demonstrates a clear motive to deceive the public about who is to blame for the
MH17 event – using falsified evidence to build a case against 'pro-Russian separatists' and Moscow,
and even Russian President Vladimir Putin himself.
What is obvious, but not being discussed in mainstream western circles, is that like Syria, Washington
and its NATO allies have been openly conducting a proxy war in the Ukraine, and have managed to
control media coverage in the west so that what clearly a Civil War in the Ukraine
– is being cynically, and very wrongly labeled as an "anti-terror operation". On a daily basis,
the Ukrainian Military are carrying out attacks on civilian targets all over Eastern Ukraine, killing
thousands of its own innocent citizens with the full logistical and financial backing of the Washington
and NATO. In Syria, the tables are reversed, where the government in Damascus is clearly fighting
against known al Qaeda and ISIS-linked foreign terrorists brigades, as Washington and London politicians
and media insist on calling it a 'civil war'. Both are classic proxy wars being waged by the NATO
block of nations.
More Falsified and Sloppy 'Evidence' Supplied by SBU Defense Ministry in Kiev
Let's start with the famous 5 second YouTube video released by Kiev and lauded by Washington,
CNN, ABC, FOX et all, of a BUK missile battery being moved, we were told, secretly by rebels out
of the area after the plane crash.
Not only does signage clearly visible in the video place this truck in Krasnoarmeysk
– a town which has been in control of the Ukrainian Army since May 11th. Here is one early news
release of the now discredited video.
In the absence of any real evidence or data, it's worth asking who has paid large sums of
money to create a 3-D computer animation sequences, of what the US/Kiev governments claim look place?
In addition to falsified YouTube video,
Kiev also
published falsified photos of an alleged BUK missile system on July 19th. Kiev's Security Service
(SBU)
published photos online it claimed showed 'Russia' secretly withdrawing a BUK-M system from
the Ukraine civil war zone, but shortly after publishing this article the photos in question
were deleted. The photo released by Kiev was actually an image taken of its own military's
BUK missiles – ironically, our readers will find that Kiev showing photos of its own systems
is much closer to the real story than we previously thought.
Somewhat haphazardly, Kiev's SBU, which is overseen by the new CIA station occupying the top
floor in the same building in Kiev, released two more videos meant to assign blame to rebels in
Donetsk, with Kiev claiming these were of Russian-made BUK-M being transported back to Russia on
July 18th after the crash – but both videos were clearly shot during the winter time, with
one found to have been previously published in March. Again, more intentional lying by Kiev, in
order to assign blame to 'pro-Russian Separatists', and Moscow.
Kiev's Botched Social Media 'Audio Clips'
Early on, Washington and the entire western media machine, made much of two audio 'tapes'
released via YouTube by Kiev officials, alleged to be taken from conversations between 'pro-Russian
separatist' rebel commanders.
Both Kiev and Washington held these up as 'evidence' of rebels using a BUK SAM missile
system to shoot down MH17. The only problem here, is that both 'tapes' contradict each other regarding
the location of the alleged missile batteries.
Vladimir Suchan points out the obvious, "The identification of the direction
of the blast then also disproves the junta's videos with "leaked conversations" from yesterday and
today–for the missile could not then be launched either from Debaltzevo, or
Donetsk, as claimed on both tapes -these places were by then a bit far, and not
in front of MH17. That's also evidently why, today the junta's sites are claiming that the BUK missile
battery was supposed to be in Snezhnoye, forgetting all about their first tape leak with commander
'Bes' from Gorlovka (40 miles north-west). If the Ukrainian Army used a BUK missile, then
it would most likely have been fired from north of Amvrosivka, which is a place of a large concentration
of Ukrainian troops. It is also southwest of Torez and Snezhnoye in the proximity of which the crash
site is located. BUK missiles have a range of up to 20 miles. Enough for a battery in the Amvrosivka
region."
"The only problem is that there is absolutely no way to confirm who "Major"
and "Grek" are, and considering the entire Ukraine civil war has been merely one
provocation and counter-provocation after another, explicitly staged in advance by either the CIA
on the side of Kiev or the Kremlin on the Russian side, one does have to wonder whether the said
two "smoking gun" participants aren't merely two random people speaking Russian and reading off
a script?
The clip concludes with another unnamed "Militant" who supposedly is speaking to
Mykola Kozitsyn, one of the purported leaders of the Cossacks operating in east Ukraine.
The Militant makes it clear to Kozitsyn that it is not a military plane and has "Malaysian Airlines"
written on the side. One wonders just where one could find such writing on the side of the crashed
and exploded fuselage but that one is for the forensics to decide."
In addition, multiple independent analysis's of these audio recordings also reveals that these audio
recordings were not integral files, indicating they were spliced together, as is evident from the
different time stamp dates visible from the raw audio data. It also reveals at least one portion
was recorded, or edited on July 16th – before the crash of MH17.
ITAR-TASS Agency confirms this:
"The tape's second fragment consists of three pieces but was presented as a single audio
recording. However, a spectral and time analysis has showed that the dialog was cut into pieces
and then assembled. Short pauses in the tape are very indicative: the audio file has preserved time
marks which show that the dialog was assembled from various episodes, the expert said. The tape's
linguistic analysis also shows that those who made the faked tape clearly did not have enough material
and time, the expert said. That is why, speech fragments can hardly correlate with each other in
terms of their sense and the spectral picture of audio materials also differs, the expert said.
But the most indicative moment is that the audio tape clearly shows that it was created almost a
day before the airliner crash, the expert said."
Only one conclusion can be drawn here: these tapes were faked, and released after the crash in order
to assign blame on rebels and Russia for this event.
In addition to this, video production on both Kiev 'tapes' matches a previous YouTube video –
same graphics style and editing, which was previously proven to be another fake. Interestingly,
Ukrainian producers used the same actor, an alleged Cossack rebel commander, Mykola Kozitsyn, in
their MH17 audio production.
Zero Hedge also reveals: "Finally, we clearly have no way of authenticating the recording or
the participants, it was just over a month ago, on June 5, when in another attempt to cast blame
and discredit the separatists, Ukraine released another trademark YouTube clip seeking to
disparage and frame Kozitsyn, entitled "Russian
Cossack Formations are Responsible For Chaos In Ukraine."
In summary, multiple falsified information releases by Kiev government officials only
points to one conclusion: a cover-up. By contrast, Russia officials have not released or promoted
any falsified or fraudulent 'evidence' used to assign blame to any parties – instead Moscow released
all of its verifiable data surrounding the incident which has now forced Washington to rethink its
wild approach which previously tried to pin responsibility on Russia itself…
IMAGE: President Obama and John Kerry unable to settle on a version of events (Photo:
RCJ)
Up until now, Washington has been able to give its support to openly fascist and racists
political parties and militants in western Ukraine, but as Kiev's brutal civil war wages on, world
media and more historically-minded members of Europe may eventually revolt against this risky marriage
of convenience.
US Now in Full Retreat and Damage-Control Mode
Amazingly, in a US State Department briefing led by Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf
on Tuesday July 22nd, Harf insisted that, yes, US intelligence officials still include these 'social
media' posts as part of what Secretary of State John Kerry describes as a "mountain of evidence".
Obviously under great pressure to show strength in the face of a complete collapse in confidence,
Harf (photo, below) could be seen stuttering and twitching nervously as difficult questions were
raised by members of the media.
#MARIE HARF: Under President Obama, State Department spokespersons have become 'political activists'.
In one of the biggest flops in State Dept. history, Harf appeared so desperate to shed any further
questions on 'social media evidence', that she opted for a fatal gaff - stating on record
that "US intelligence officials have authenticated the audio". Unless
she means they've authenticated these as fake, this statement may come back to haunt US
officials. Many are now calling it a bold-faced lie, designed to cover-up the mishandling and over-politicization
of posts found on social media, shamelessly used by Washington to promote a war agenda.
As a result, CNN and others are now scavenging the tragedy, trying to hide the emerging
facts under the heap of its "fair and balanced" mainstream conspiracy theories. The story has now
shifted from what happened, to how US politicians are dealing with the crisis, as was evident
after one major outlet who ran this headline, "Obama: What exactly are they trying to hide?"
On Tuesday, the US government finally admitted (as well as it could), that it had been
bluffing about its 'certainty' that Russia was behind the downing of Malaysian Air Flight MH-17.
Washington's New Conspiracy Theory
In a damage control exercise this past Tuesday, Washington invited members of the majors like
the Washington Post and the LA Times, to an 'intelligence update' briefing, and a press conference
run by the inexperienced MarieHarf.
The
Los Angeles Times reported: "U.S. intelligence agencies have so far been unable to determine
the nationalities or identities of the crew that launched the missile. U.S. officials said it was
possible the SA-11 [anti-aircraft missile] was launched by a defector from the Ukrainian military
who was trained to use similar missile systems."
The quiet U-turn by Washington signals that its previous case blaming the rebels has been destroyed,
and rather than concede that the Ukrainian Army has actually shot down MH17, they've chosen to instead
concoct a new revision about a "rogue defector" and his "rogue team" who happen to be wearing Ukrainian
Army uniforms.
Washington's new and creative official conspiracy theories now include:
1. Ukrainian separatists shot down plane by mistake after misreading 'fuzzy' radar images
on a much-too sophisticated AS-11 system (as if US intelligence officials were actually there),
probably mistook the airliner for a Ukrainian military plane (reverting to their original line). 2. Missile that brought down Malaysian jet probably fired by 'ill-trained crew' of pro-Russian
rebels
The "ill-trained crew" theory is the work of one U.S. official who, "requested anonymity
because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue". And who could blame him?
Finally, Washington ends up at a place it knows well – reducing a major geopolitical event or
crime down to the work of a lone wolf, or in this case, a 'rogue defector'
from the Ukrainian Army, an image which will no doubt fuel even more wild commentary by
Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, George Stephanopoulos and Sean Hannity.
American investigative reporter Robert Parry (who broke many of the Iran-Contra
scandal for AP and Newsweek in the 80′s) published this on
Consortium News, July 20th (based on his CIA source):
"What I've been told by one source, who has provided accurate information on similar
matters in the past, is that U.S. intelligence agencies do have detailed satellite images of the
likely missile battery that launched the fateful missile, but the battery appears to have been under
the control of Ukrainian government troops dressed in what look like Ukrainian uniforms."
This account is fully consistent with 1) the "anonymous US intelligence officers' briefing from
US mainstream media on Tuesday July 22," as reported, 2) the briefing by the Russian Ministry of
Defense on July 21 and, 3)
Alexandr Zhilin's analysis previously covered.
Backpedaling even further, Washington has officially downgraded its overall indictment, with
another 'senior intelligence official' announcing a brand new party line – a weaker thesis, somehow
claiming that, "Russia created the conditions for this to happen".
More Western Media Manipulation
London's media arms have also sprung into action in an attempt to reinforce Washington-NATO-Kiev
Axis assignment of guilt. In a classic demonstration of its pro-Foreign Office institutional bias,
Guardian writer Shawn Walker carefully attempts to contain the western guilty
verdict, considering only 'pro-Russian rebels' and intentionally reinforcing the 'Rebel-BUK conspiracy
theory'.
Walker states, "Claims by pro-Russia separatists
in east Ukraine that they have never been
in possession of the missile launcher apparently used to down flight MH17 are looking increasingly
flimsy, as several witnesses told the Guardian they had seen what appeared to be a Buk missile launcher
in the vicinity of the crash site last Thursday.
The sightings back up a number of photographs and videos posted online that put the Buk system
close to the crash site on the day of the disaster. Just before lunchtime last Thursday, prior to
the Malaysia Airlines plane's takeoff, a Buk was driven through Gagarin Street, one of the central
thoroughfares of Torez, witnesses said."
The Guardian could very well be relaying genuine eyewitness accounts here, but only advanced
media watchers will have noticed the slight of hand being applied here: Walker has ruled out any
other possible suspects other than rebels – skillfully hiding his paper's bias in reporting by pouring
evidence collected into a pre-determined verdict. If the Guardian were not applying an institutional
(British Foreign Office pre-determined conclusion) bias, then its editor would have combined the
eyewitness accounts to the clear satellite photographic evidence provided by the Russian authorities,
and it doesn't take a genius to figure out who was really in possession of these surface-to-air
missile systems – the Ukrainian military.
Official US Plan to Destroy Civilian Aircraft for Diplomatic Gain
The first official known plan to fake the destruction of a civilian aircraft was drafted by the
US Pentagon in 1962. A former NSA analyst at
Strategic Culture reports:
"The use of commercial passenger planes as false flag targets of opportunity for U.S. national
security and intelligence planners is nothing new. The U.S. National Archives yielded
an explosive formerly classified document some five months before the 9/11 attack in 2001. The document,
"Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba", outlined for Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara, a series of false flag attacks, code named OPERATION NORTHWOODS, which
would be carried out by the United States on various targets but be blamed on the Fidel Castro government
of Cuba. Dated March 13, 1962, the Top Secret NORTHWOODS document was prepared by America's top
covert Special Operations officer, General Edward Lansdale."
"The NORTHWOODS plans called for the sinking of a boatload of Cuban refugees en route from Cuba
to U.S. shores, blowing up an American ship in Cuban waters, and more importantly in light of the
recent downing of Malaysian Airlines flight 17 over eastern Ukraine, faking a Cuban Air Force attack
on a civilian jetliner.
Lansdale and his NORTHWOODS planners concluded that the U.S. invasion of Cuba would receive
wide support as a result of an outraged public. The document states: "World opinion and the United
Nations forum should be favorably affected by developing the international image of Cuban government
as rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western
Hemisphere."
Most certainly, this blueprint by US intelligence is mirrored today in 2014, as the US and its
NATO member allies (and media assets in tow) using totally synchronized messaging – dominated by
wild speculation, hyperbole and hysteria characterizing the rebels in the east of Ukraine as terrorists,
Russia as the enemy, and President Vladimir Putin as 'the personification of evil' for American
and British media consumers.
The world can only pray, that the truth may prevail.
I think I now have details on the shoot down of the 777 that pin everything in place.
A poster at militaryphotos has noted that the the distance from the missile origin point
in Snizhne to the last known position of the Malaysian airliner is over 26 km (http://i.imgur.com/qqCWE1n.jpg).
Note that this is not the transponder last call location which is much farther west but the
actual shoot down point. The problem is that the older 9M38 Buk missile has a range of 25 km
(http://www.military-today.com/missiles/buk.htm,
they say 20.5 km but that is an obvious typo given the ceiling of 25 km). So it is not physically
possible for some rebel Buk in Snizhne (Snezhnoye) to have taken out a target at 11 km altitude
and 26 km away even if all the pieces were there and it was operated by professionals.
Good catch!
On the other hand, though…
There is that eye-witness account (from the woman watching on the ground – video in comment
above) that the plane TURNED AROUND 180 degrees in the air after being shot.
I agree that, given the fallability of human memory, eye-witness evidence should not be given
very high value if more scientific sources are available. But still, assuming it MIGHT be an
accurate observation from the eye-witness, and by the way, this is Zhilin's theory too: That
the plane was rocketed by the accompaying Uke jet fighter, then turned around 180 degrees, I
guess desperately trying to fly back to Kharkiv or somewhere to make an emergency landing. And
then was finished off by the BUK from the ground.
If this theory has any merit, then:
-The pin in the map showing "last recorded position" in Rozsypne would not necessarily be correct,
as that position is calculated from the theory that the plane travelled West to East at a steady
rate until it was shot down by something not more than 25 km away.
-On the other hand, if the plane was further East than we thought (and then turned around just
before being finished off by the BUK), it could theoretically have been within the 25 km radius
from Snizhne. It could have been travelling WEST when it finally crashed down just north ofTorez.
In conclusion: Whether or not this case can be cracked depends a lot on the "turn-around"
theory, because that invalidates a lot of the math that was done on the assumption of plane
flying West to East at a steady acceleration.
I am not dismissing the theory you describe. But the information I have found and posted is
enough to refute the US official claim as to what transpired. BTW, the turnaround would not
necessarily involve a long flight distance and the regime Buk positions west of Torez would
still be the most likely source of any Buk missile hit.
21st Century Wire is presently arguing that it is a failed false flag. I know that geopolitics
is a rotten game, but I hope they are wrong. That would be too cruel. (I still think that Ria
Novosti got a serious tip-off…)
To Fern, can't we quickly agree that Maria M is not the sharpest axe in the shed. (By the way,
I think that VVP is seriously bright. But he has to be very careful.)
This piece is good, it provides actual radar coordinates and other data for techies to examine.
Also:
On Monday, the Russian government, with almost every major global media outlet in attendance,
released all of its air traffic data and satellite imaging data (in fact, only part of it)
– all verifiable, including time stamps and supporting data. The entire content of the presentation
was also handed over to the European authorities. The conclusions to be drawn from this
are stunning, to say the least. Despite the public release of this information, US and British
media outlets did report back to its people on these findings. They are as follows:
Minutes before the downing of MH17, the plane made a mysterious 'Left Turn' as it flew
over the Donetsk area at approximately 5:20pm Moscow time, making a sharp 14km deviation,
before attempting to regain its previous course before dropping altitude disappearing from
radar at 5:23pm. As we previously pointed out, air traffic controllers in Kiev had already
diverted MH17 200 miles further north into the target zone, so the question remains: was
Kiev ATC also responsible for this final, fatal diversion, or is there another reason for
this unusual turn (see 'Mysterious Left Turn', below)?
According to clear satellite images provided, on July 16th, the Ukrainian Army positioned
3-4 anti-aircraft BUK M1 SAM missile batteries close to Donetsk. These systems included
full launching, loading and radio location units, located in the immediate vicinity of the
MH17 crash site. One system was placed approximately 8km northwest of Lugansk. In addition,
a radio location system for these Ukrainian Army missile batteries is situated 5km north
of Donetsk. On July 17th, the day of the incident, these batteries were moved to a position
8km south of Shahktyorsk. In addition to this, two other radio location units are also identified
in the immediate vicinity. These SAM systems had a range of 35km distance, and 25km altitude.
From July 18th, after the downing of MH17, Kiev's BUK launchers were then moved away
from the firing zone.
This seems to me a pretty slam-dunk case for "Ukropy dunnit"
P.S.
everybody should read the entire piece, it is really good and goes into detail on all the talking
points and evidence brought in so far.
It reminded me that Ukies initially claimed the "rebel BUK" came from Debaltsevo (that was those
initial "wiretaps supposedly of rebel conversations), and then changed their story to the current
"Sneznoe" locations, which also has problems.
When somebody keeps changing their story, that might be a good sign that they are lying.
I think the black box will actually prove or disprove the case; but, unfortunately, that
black box is in the hands of British government; if it shows something they don't want to see,
they will probably destroy the evidence.
yalensis, yeah, it's really bad news that the black boxes were sent to the UK, particularly
since the anti-Kiev fighters had taken so much trouble to keep them out of Kiev's hands and
give them over to Malaysian officials only for those officials to hand them to one of Kiev's
main ideological backers. However, the US/UK can't be absolutely sure who else might have a
recording of the Kiev Control Tower's conversation with MH17 – just as they couldn't be absolutely
sure what Russia's radar and satellites saw – so blatant tampering may be highly risky. Does
anyone know if there are any back-up systems for the black boxes and, if so, what happened to
them? I find it hard to believe that Russia would be unaware of the risk of the black box data
being manipulated and, if aware, would be inactive in trying to head that problem off at the
pass.
21stCenturyWire.com's analysis is an excellent one. However one question remains: why target
a Malaysian Airlines jet and not any other, especially as news is now out that an Air India
Dreamliner passenger jet on its way to Birmingham from Delhi was less than 25 km (90 seconds
away) from the Boeing at the time of the shoot-down.
The flight crew of the Air India jet was asked by air traffic control at Dnepropetrovsk airport
to establish contact with the Boeing crew; apparently ATC had lost contact with MH-17. The Air
India pilots heard ATC giving orders to MH-17 for "direct routing", that is, to fly straight
instead of tracking from one navigation point to another, zig-zag style.
http://www.news24.com/Travel/Flights/Air-India-plane-only-90-seconds-away-from-MH17-tried-to-make-contact-20140721
If the Kyivsters needed to bring a plane down so as to force or nudge the US or NATO to send
peacekeepers to the intended area near the Ukraine-Russia border, they could have shot down
the Air India jet or other jets passing through Dnepropetrovsk's air space. (Singapore Airlines
also had a jet flying nearby.) The Air India plane would have been an ideal target: think of
the propaganda mileage the US and Kyiv could derive from saying Russia had hit an Indian plane,
and pressure could be placed on India to cut any political, economic and military ties with
Russia. India would have to withdraw its support for the new BRICS bank.
Ah – they tried to cover all their options to make it a credible "terrorists soot down plane"
story: the plane should've 'looked' like a Ukie plane, it should crash close to the Russian
border, therefore it should fly from West to East.
Thus a plane flying East to West wouldn't provide a 'reason' for the "terrorists" to shoot down,
because they would supposedly not shoot at a plane coming from Russia. The junta also hoped
to get NATO into it, given that the Netherlands are a NATO member which India isn't, and I assume
they knew that many Dutch people were on board. They probably also hoped that India would be
properly horrified because, for the fascist junta, Malaysians and Indians are all the same:
some brown people, probably also 'untermenschen', thus nothing but collateral damage.
Who knows – it might simply have been rank stupidity.
Yeah, like colliemum says, the Indian airliner was flying in the "wrong" direction: It was flying
East to West. I think the point was to get a bird to fall in or near the "cauldron area" of
the borerlands. Based on speed and distance, in order to get the Indian plane to fall into the
"correct" area, Ukropy would have to shoot at it while it was still in Russia. And that would
not fit with the playbook.
And by the way, I think it is really time for people to take a
second look at that infamous "July 16″ timestamp on the first of the Ukrainian-released "tapes
for the prosecution". That was the tape (with a file-creation stamp of July 16) in which insurgents
supposedly "admitted" to firing off a BUK from the area of Debaltsevo. (Which story Ukies are
now back-tracking from and saying the BUK came from Snezhnoe.)
Granted that a computer timestamp is not definitive proof, but it is one fact to pile on with
all the others; It is starting to look pretty clear that the criminals DID plan this whole thing
in advance, and July 16 could well have been the day when they set the scheme in motion. Then
all the predator had to do was just wait for the best opportunity and the appropriate victim
to wander by.
For their scheme to work, Ukropy basically needed a West-to-East flight to be brought down
in the "correct" spot. I don't think there was anything special about the Malaysian flight other
than that. Malaysians are just an unlucky people, they just picked the short straw, that's all.
There was an element of randomness.
Version of the crash Malaysian Boeing 777 under Donetsk, different from all previous versions published
Russian RIA Novosti. Moreover, it is not even a version of the Agency, which refers to the source...
as a person who serves in the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine. According to the source, the
incident is the result of a tragic accident that occurred during the traning of the Ukrainian anti-aircraft
defence.
Of course, we must realize that information war between Ukraine and Russia is in full
swing now, and it is conducted with the participation of the third countries. For example, the USA.
That reports that the parties advance often do not correspond to reality and often is not an information
but pure propaganda in one form or another. However, we think that in such resonant case, as the
collapse of the Malaysian Boeing, all versions.should be fully introduced and investigated
So, what RIA Novosti reported?
"In the day of disaster Malaysian liner on Ukraine's air defense units of the Ukrainian armed
forces carried out a training of removing the system lock key, the emergency situation occurred.
It could be a cause of the tragedy with Boeing", reports the Russian news Agency, referring, as
noted above, for the information of the source in one of the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine.
The Agency reminds that Boeing flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed on July 17 in Donetsk
region. Onboard the liner there were 298 people, they all died. The Kyiv authorities have accused
militias, while milicia claims that they do not have the air defence complexes which could bring
down the plane at this altitude.
"on July 17, the commander of the 156-th of anti-aircraft missile regiment was ordered to
conduct a training of combat crews which provides cover for ground forces in the outskirts of Donetsk.
That trining included deployment of divisions, to work out the following of targets and to complete
the whole algorithm for folloing and subseunt mock destruction of the targt with the missile Buk-M1"
told the source.
According to him, despite the fact that the commanders of batteries were issued unlock keys to
conduct missile launches, real rocket launch of the rocket 9M38M1 was not planned.
"To participate in the training two su-25 were sent to Dnepropetrovsk from air base Kulbakino
of 229 tactical aviation brigade in Mykolaiv. They were tasked to conduct aerial reconnaissance
and designate targets in the area of focus groups ATO West of Donetsk", - the source said.
"After the entrance of one of the aircraft in the detection zone Buk" it was followed by
one combat crew's battery, located at the settlement Zaramensky. Apparently, according to a tragic
accident after some time the routes of flights Malaysian Boeing and su-25, despite the difference
in levels, coincided, merged on the screen in one major point that was fatal to the civil airliner
as at time of convergence of tragectories the system is automatically continued to follow the one
with larget radar footprint", - he said.
The source was unable to explain the cause of unauthorized missile launch. "At 8:20 PM SBU people
detailed the commander of the battery with the crew", - he explained, adding that does not have
data on the how SBU investigating this case.
"Since 2001 after the tragedy with the Russian Tu-154 above the Black sea on all practical exercises
involving "Books" were prohibited. Accordingly, the servicemen have only practice maintenance of
the complex and driving skills," he said a source in the security Ministry, stressing that this
is his personal opinion.
The Agency reminds that during the exercises of the air defense of Ukraine in 2001 missile system
s-200 shot down a Russian passenger plane Tu-154, following the route tel Aviv-Novosibirsk. Killed
78 people, of them 66 passengers, most of whom were Israeli citizens, and 12 crew members. Courts
in Ukraine refused to admit involvement in the tragedy of the Ukrainian military.
It is interesting, that the answer to this law enforcement agencies of Ukraine? We can assume
that in any case, even if the above proves true, the recognition will not. This, unfortunately,
the world practice: stand, lie to the end, but don't tell us now that you killed innocent civilians!
Do all countries. So neither Ukraine nor Russia confessions should not wait. But hand on heart,
it should acknowledged that the press conference of the Ministry of defense of Russia, was the only
one at which objective technical data monitoring flight of Boeing were presented. And it remains
still the only one, at which some details of the incident were officially disclosed. Neither Ukraine
nor the US, unfortunately, presented anything similar to the world. Which we all want to happen.
Moreover, the US constantly hinting that they have data at their disposal. Hinting but remain
completely silent...
We had an AWACS conducting missions in NATO airspace over Poland & Romania
more than 500nm from the #MH17 crash position. They were only able to track
MH17 until 1300zulu when it flew over the eastern area of Kiew.
FYI: While the total number of aviators can vary for a specific task, it
isn't anywhere near 50 or 60 people. A full aircrew for the E-3A Sentry
consist of a flight crew (2 pilots, 1 navigator & 1 flight engineer) and a
mission crew (1 tactical director, 1 fighter allocator officer, 2 weapons
controllers, 1 passive controller, 1 surveillance controller, 2
surveillance operators, 1 communications technician, 1 radar technician & 1
systems technician).
For more information about each aircrew position…
Prepper Nurse says:
July 22, 2014 at 2:41 pm
Oh my word….at the very least they know who's responsible, and if it was
the Russians they would be shouting it to the roof tops. And if it's not
the rebels, but the Ukrainian government they are at the very least lying
by omission, not wanting to out an ally. Thank you for posting!
After all the propaganda about the downed MH17 flight, screams about alleged looting and demands
of access to the site, one would have expected some serious attempts to immediately investigate
the case.
At the field in Ukraine where the exploded remnants landed, there are no guards and no recovery
workers, no police officers and no investigators. Early Thursday evening, there were almost
no people - just two curious 12-year-old girls looking at part of the tail of the Boeing 777.
...
"There's no one out here," said Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe, whose monitoring mission has been on the site every day since Friday.
As for the arrival of international experts, "it's not like our door is being broken down."
After the U.S. blustering "we have evidence" that Russia did it and then showing nothing of it
- "just trust us" - the U.S. seems have lost all interests to really find out who's ammunition downed
the plane. Russia had early on called for an international investigation and it was Russia alone
so far which
presented real evidence on the case. U.S. ships with very capable missile defense radars were
in the Black Sea over the last weeks and likely have very detailed track records of every flight
and missile launch up to several hundred of miles away. None of those have been made public. We
can guess why.
And those "looting" claims?
There were a few new faces at the site on Thursday. Three Australian investigators worked in
the field, joining three Malaysians. Before departing Thursday, the Malaysians said that they
were surprised at the amount of access they had to the site and that they felt safe, Mr. Bociurkiw
said.
There have been widespread reports of looting, but Mr. Bociurkiw said his monitoring group,
which has now spent more time at the site than any other, had not seen any. The Malaysians said
they had seen valuables in the fields untouched, he noted, including a bottle of duty-free perfume,
auto parts, backpacks full of belongings, a watch and some jewelry.
Those claims of looting were false just as the claims of mishandling the remains of the victims
were false.
But the White House will not take back one any of those false claims. It continues its anti-Russia
campaign is coming up with
new claims for which again no facts are presented to back them up:
American officials, citing military intelligence, including satellite images, warned that Russia
appeared to be preparing to arm the rebels with more high-powered weaponry - including tanks and
armored vehicles - than it had previously supplied. In Kiev, a military spokesman said that Ukrainian
troops were coming under increased fire from the Russian side of the border and that the Ukrainian
military had recently shot down three Russian surveillance drones. One was used to target a Ukrainian
base near the town of Amvrosiivka, which then quickly came under heavy rocket attack, the spokesman
said.
Again these are just claims. Not one of the "satellite images" cited was presented.
But the main stream media fall for such nonsense and market it without inserting even the least
bit of doubt.
Clearly the powers who be do want a war with Russia. A cold one for now but a hot one, destroying
Europe's production capacities, would even be better for rather tepid U.S. economy.
thanks b.. yes this seems to be the way the western media operates. be the vehicle for whatever
some us or western official has to say without substance( just infer substance) and then when
it looks like the plane was shoot down during some ongoing military exercise with ukraine and
the usa/nato - make like it is over and nothing happened as it was the wrong side responsible
for the death of these innocent people.. we are being lied to regularly, but the thing i find
most discouraging is this.. someone, or a number of people know what happened here and they
ain't saying as it implicates them..
Hoarsewhisperer
If the byline for all this Yankee-inspired anti-Putin hokum were allowed to just write itself
from the lexicon of public opinion, it would look something like this... New American Century descends into Dog Day Afternoon farce.
This a pattern that we've been frozen in since April. Kiev/U.S. make some outlandish claim
that is dutifully waved through to the front page of the Western press. This in order to stampede
Europe into applying sector-wide sanctions. Merkel makes noises that real stinging stuff is
coming down the pike that will make Putin's oligarchs feel real pain. And then nothing ever
materials. Hit repeat.
The problem is the clocking is ticking in Kiev. Eventually the IMF diktats will have to be
put into effect. Then the troops will have to be brought back from Novorossiya to police the
Maidan. That's why Kiev/U.S. is upping the ante with MH17 and now stories that the Pentagon
is dusting off its war plans for Russia.
shargash
IMO, that the US is changing the subject away from MH17 likely means that the US knows (i.e.
has hard evidence of) who did the shooting, and it wasn't the Donbass rebels or Russia. When
the truth finally comes out, the US will say "Who cares about MH17? Look at all the other evil
things the Russkies are doing!" And if that fails, they'll find something else to distract the
rubes. "Look over there! Ebola!"
guest77
The US media has really stepped up its lying over the events in Ukraine, and to a level
it seems to me far advanced of how it pushed even the so-called Arab Spring. "Oh what a
tangled web we weave" certainly is the case here. and it will be that much more difficult for
the US to extract itself when the Ukraine Crisis finally reaches it climax...
Don Bacon #6. What was interesting about the Harf press conference where she announced that
Russia was shelling Ukrainian positions in Donbas was the reaction of the reporters. They grilled
her awhile for the evidence. Then they began mocking her. One even asked if she would at least
give them a youtube link supporting the story. This question was a snide reference to the youtube
link she provided in an earlier press conference that showed the rebels with a SA6 battery.
She started to get pissed by the end of these questions.
The reporters working these stories
know they are being fed bullshit. Their papers leave that part out.
Here are some more clues from Pepe Escobar courtesy of the Saker blog. The fingerprints of Mossad,
known for past horrendous misdeed, might be appearing -
"The damaged MH17 starboard jet engine
suggests a shape charge from an air-to-air missile – and not a Buk; that's consistent with the
Russian Ministry of Defense presentation graphically highlighting an Ukrainian SU-25 shadowing
MH17. Increasingly, the Buk scenario – hysterically peddled by the Empire of Chaos – is being
discarded. Not to mention, again, that not a single eyewitness saw the very graphic, thick missile
trace that would have been clearly visible had a Buk been used."
Way beyond the established fact of a Ukrainian SU-25 trailing MH17, plenty of unanswered
questions remain, some involving a murky security procedure at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport
– where security is operated by ICTS, an Israeli company based in The Netherlands and founded
by former officers from the Israeli Shin Bet intel agency. And then there is the unexplained
presence of "foreign" advisors in Kiev's control tower.
Despite the conclusion by US intelligence that there is no evidence of Russian involvement
in the destruction of the Malaysian airliner and all lives onboard, Washington is escalating
the crisis and shepherding it toward war.
Twenty-two US senators have introduced into the 113th Congress, Second Session, a bill, S.2277,
"To prevent further Russian aggression toward Ukraine and other sovereign states in Europe and
Eurasia, and for other purposes."
https://beta.congress.gov/113/bills/s2277/BILLS-113s2277is.pdf The bill is before the Committee
on Foreign Relations.
Note that prior to any evidence of any Russian aggression, there are already 22
senators lined up in behalf of preventing further Russian aggression.
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/543733-mh17-down-near-donetsk-47.html#post8578950
It has been published this morning in the Russian news that there is an internal investigation
being carried on by the security service of Ukraine concerning potential unintentional launch
of a BUK missile by the army on the day of tragedy.
Do not trust any press, but here is the original article:
It is written that after some BUK batteries arrived into the Donetsk area a few days prior
to the event, a training campaign for the BUK crews was planned and implemented (as the crews
were untrained). To be closer to the reality, a couple of Ukrainian Su-25 flew over from the
Nikolaev and Dnepropetrovsk area to simulate the real targets that the ground crews should train
with. Everything should have been "real", except for after "pressing the launch button" the
missile should not be ignited and the whole BUK complex should remain in a simulation mode.
A version to be investigated in detail implies that the ground crew of a particular BUK complex
deployed near the village/town of Zaroschenskoye (south of Shakhtersk, close to the line between
the rebels and the regulars) indeed acquired one of Su-25 as a target and the system started
followed him. The ill-fated 777 was flying above Su-25 entering into the beam cone of the BUK
radar. Then for unknown reasons the missile was launched (some experts say it indeed may happen
if the system hardware was not duly reconfigured – AV) and since that radar cross section of
777 is much higher than that of Su-25, the missile chased the MH17. System wise, having two
angular variables identical for both planes should not be enough, as there always is the third
one – range. Was it because just the wrong plane was selected by the operator, or maybe the
range channel did not work properly is difficult to say.
Again, could well be another piece of disinformation, but the whole situation is very similar
to what happened in 2001 when the Ukrainian army was training in Crimea and hit (with S-200)
the Tu-154 flying over the Black Sea coming from Israel to Siberia. Moreover, in 2001 the S-200
operators had enough time to realise that the missile was kept flying for much longer time and
distance than to the target and could issue a self-destruction command (but did not do that
probably being not trained/attentive enough). Here, the ground operator obviously did not have
enough time to divert/destruct the missile.
####
& this from the Guardian
The Guardian: To mock President Putin's pride and test his paranoia is folly The downing of flight MH17 was clearly an accident. This tragedy should not be used as an
excuse to punish Russia.
It is written that after some BUK batteries arrived into the Donetsk area a few days prior
to the event, a training campaign for the BUK crews was planned and implemented (as the crews
were untrained). To be closer to the reality, a couple of Ukrainian Su-25 flew over from the
Nikolaev and Dnepropetrovsk area to simulate the real targets that the ground crews should train
with. Everything should have been "real", except for after "pressing the launch button" the
missile should not be ignited and the whole BUK complex should remain in a simulation mode.
A version to be investigated in detail implies that the ground crew of a particular BUK complex
deployed near the village/town of Zaroschenskoye (south of Shakhtersk, close to the line between
the rebels and the regulars) indeed acquired one of Su-25 as a target and the system started
followed him.
The ill-fated 777 was flying above Su-25 entering into the beam cone of the BUK radar. Then
for unknown reasons the missile was launched (some experts say it indeed may happen if the system
hardware was not duly reconfigured – AV) and since that radar cross section of 777 is much higher
than that of Su-25, the missile chased the MH17.
System wise, having two angular variables identical for both planes should not be enough,
as there always is the third one – range. Was it because just the wrong plane was selected by
the operator, or maybe the range channel did not work properly is difficult to say.
Again, could well be another piece of disinformation, but the whole situation is very similar
to what happened in 2001 when the Ukrainian army was training in Crimea and hit (with S-200)
the Tu-154 flying over the Black Sea coming from Israel to Siberia.
Moreover, in 2001 the S-200 operators had enough time to realise that the missile was kept
flying for much longer time and distance than to the target and could issue a self-destruction
command (but did not do that probably being not trained/attentive enough). Here, the ground
operator obviously did not have enough time to divert/destruct the missile.
Why does foreign policy default to stupid? From the moment that we heard of
the Malaysian airliner shot
down over Ukraine it was clearly an accident. Whoever's finger was on the trigger, the tragedy
cannot have been meant. This was not another 9/11. It was cock-up, not conspiracy.
Yet foreign
policy craves conspiracy. Vladimir Putin blamed the Ukrainian government. Ukraine blamed the pro-Russian
rebels. America's UN ambassador, Samantha Power, "cannot rule out" Moscow's responsibility. London
howled blue murder all round. There had been blood. There had to be blame.
What happened was a ghastly mess in bandit country, meriting the swiftest possible restoration
of dignity for the victims. Yet before even the bodies had been collected, politicians vied with
each other for
tightening sanctions, ending trade, expelling oligarchs and freezing bank accounts. Soon they
were fighting like rats in a sack. Barack Obama was a wimp. François Hollande was an appeaser. David
Cameron was a hypocrite. The philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy
hurled
down thunderbolts on everyone, "This is the spirit of Munich – appeasement. And it is a disgrace."
These moments are dangerous. In 1914, the Austrian government declared the madcap shooting of
the Archduke Franz Ferdinand a "Serbian government plot" and went to war. In 1983, the Russians
shot down a Korean airliner that had strayed over Siberia, killing all 269 people on board. It was
clearly an accident, the fighter pilots' ground control being drunk and panicking. This intelligence
was suppressed and the incident exploited to precipitate one of the most scary confrontations of
the cold war.
Five years later it was America's turn, when a US cruiser shot down an Iranian civilian Airbus
A300 in Iranian airspace. The US navy wriggled and excused itself, while Iran seized on it as a
crime of wanton aggression, aided by America rewarding its sailors with medals. Washington refused
to admit legal liability, and took eight years to pay $62m in compensation to bereaved families.
What is terrifying is how such incidents are distorted to suit the interests of revenge. Clearly
Putin has been reckless along Russia's western frontier, backing Ukrainian rebels with enough weaponry
to make accidents more likely to happen. Yet the idea that he willed the tragedy is as absurd as
that Konstantin Chernenko willed the Korean massacre or Ronald Reagan the downing of an Iranian
plane.
Putin must have been as appalled as anyone at the fate of the airliner. It also sabotaged his
delicate power play in the region and threw him on the defensive. Intelligence from Moscow suggests
that he is bruised and angry, retreating into his circle of hawkish advisers and their nationalist
rhetoric. This is the moment Confucius advises us to give the enemy a bridge over which to retreat.
Instead, the west's hawks are having a field day, deriding Putin's paranoia as if to goad him into
doing something worse.
Visiting Russia in the 1990s after its humiliation in the cold war, I found it a sad and dangerous
place, not unlike Germany after its defeat in 1918. Yet it was as if no western diplomat had
read the Treaty of Versailles, or noted Keynes' warning of the consequences. Much was done
to build economic ties between west and east. Energy, investment and contacts flowed back and forth.
Western companies cavorted with oligarchs and kleptocrats. Money stolen from the Russian people
gushed into the wildcat banks of Cyprus and London and into the Swiss and British property markets.
London must rank as the greatest receiver of stolen goods of all time.
So far, so good. But at the same time, Nato and the EU rolled forward over eastern Europe to
the Russian frontier, as if aiming its guns at the gates of Moscow to taunt Russia for its defeat.
Nato apologists argued that any country, be it Latvia, Georgia or Ukraine, should be free to join
whichever club it liked (albeit objecting when Crimeans voted the other way). Yet only fools can
ignore the fact of Russian pride and fear of encirclement. The post-cold war provocation of Putin
was good public relations, but it was rotten history.
We are told that east Ukraine is one of many potential explosions that Putin could trigger along
the Russian border, from the Baltic to the Caucasus. Everywhere are Russian minorities (or majorities)
that could clash with local non-Russians. Europe's leaders have no conceivable interest in stirring
up such conflicts – and yet that was precisely what they sought to do in Georgia and Ukraine.
For Britain – or America – to try and lay down the law along Russia's extensive borders is barking
mad; to use a tragic plane accident as casus belli equally so. It is nothing but breast-beating
machismo. Yet again we lurch towards the woolly-headed daftness of economic sanctions. It is
beyond hypocrisy for the west to demand sanctions against Moscow when it happily buys Russian gas
and sells Russia guns, ships, Knightsbridge flats and places at Eton. These double-standards are
of our hand. According to the commons committee on arms exports, Britain currently sells arms worth
£12bn to 27 countries listed by the Foreign Office as "of human rights concern". It cannot enhance
world peace to make Europe's energy more expensive, Russian loans harder to get or Harrods less
accessible to "Putin's cronies". Putin could not care less.
Economic sanctions are to modern statecraft what mounted lancers were to war in the trenches:
magnificent but useless. Their continued deployment defies study after study showing them as cosmetic,
cruel or counterproductive. Yet how many times has Cameron emerged from his Cobra bunker to threaten
"tighter economic sanctions" against some rogue regime, to absolutely no effect? The rhetoric is
always the same, to "send a message", show resolve, impose a price, not to let "wrongdoing go unpunished".
It is as if Britain were some superannuated school prefect.
The emergence in Moscow in the 1990s of a tough, philistine nationalist like Putin was a near
certainty. He may be a nasty piece of work but he runs what it is still a powerful nation. Mocking
his pride and testing his paranoia is for fools. The one country that knows this and can keep a
sane head on its shoulders is run by Angela Merkel. Thank goodness for Germany.
"It is as if Britain were some superannuated school prefect"
Classic.
Governments - particularly democratic ones with short election cycles - rarely think long
term. They focus on immediate gains - an increase in the local opinion polls, their personal
or party's standing on the world stage - etc, rather than the future of their country, its citizens,
and the worldwide community. So it's not surprising that they would exhibit this sort of myopic
behavior and let a future government worry about picking up the pieces.
Yes - That sums up the UK so well. The Brits (Aussies and Canadians too) and their aping of
US foreign policy can also be likened to one the cluster of cowards that hide behind the school
bully as he pummels the designated enemy
keable68 insanedreamer 25 July 2014 10:42am
Exactly. Watching Cameron try to play the hard man on the world stage for domestic political
capital is sickening. And then having to back peddle frantically after criticising France when
it is discovered that the UK Government is still allowing weapons sales to Russia.
Nasty little man. Should have done a bit of research before opening his mouth.
Rolex Tablet keable68 25 July 2014 11:25am
He doesn't do any thinking, he was reading from a script handed to him by obama.
Rialbynot LoicdeMarsillac 25 July 2014 8:01am
And just to reiterate Simon's point, those who are constanly jumping on Putin are driving Russia
ever further from Europe and ever closer to China.
Perhaps this is somehow in the U.S. interest, but it cannot be in Europe's interest.
Rialbynot Rialbynot 25 July 2014 8:09am
And what is so difficult to understand from my East Central European perspective is why the
EU has so utterly failed to persuade the Ukrainian leadership to make real reforms in the direction
of federalism.
Europe needs a modern federal Ukraine, not a whole series of mafia-controlled fiefdoms -
the present oblasts.
The model of governance for Ukraine should be the Federal Republic of Germany. The EU has
every right to insist on this. If Ukraine (the Kiev governing elite) disagrees, well, it can
go its own way - towards total bankruptcy and social disorder,
Simonb101 25 July 2014 6:30am
The problem is that the UK has a lot of assets in Russia - so the quid pro-quo will ultimately
be self-defeating.
I say we stay out of this one and let the pandering lefties in Europe deal with it. Not that
they are capable of doing anything at all - let alone make a decision.
radical 25 July 2014 6:45am
Easily the best piece written about the situation could you send a copy to the Daily Telegraph,
which is looking more like John Bull circa 1914 everyday. Boris Johnson's piece claiming that
the US had behaved with 'wisdom and maturity' over the Vincennes incident was a pack of lies
from beginning to end. Thank you Simon for restoring my faith in the quality of British journalism.
IllWind 25 July 2014 6:57am
In a hagiographic interview with New Yorker, vice president of USA has boasted that America
is at the top an one is anywhere close to them. Mocking Russia, he asserts that they were no
match for US and as if joking adds that except a crazy action to press the button, Russia will
always play second fiddle to them. The savant of global hegemony does not stop to consider that
given the conditions, crazy or not, any Russian leader will press the button! America has been
responsible for most of the injustices and wars and strifes and killing since the second world
war, and yet it is creating all the right conditions for a third one, which like other two,
will have origin in seemingly madcap action.
HauptmannGurski 25 July 2014 6:58am
I have thought for a while that the West is grinding its teeth because they'd want more influence
(power) in Russia. In the West it is the corporations who direct the politicians and the politics;
in Russia it's more the politicians directing the corporations. They think that removing President
Putin will give them more influence over the corporations there, but I would not bet on it.
TommyLimey 25 July 2014 7:00am
The western governments have ruined their economy's and would rather have global Armageddon,
than admit their mistakes ,the demonetization of Putin is part of the plan.
Verbum John Gurley 25 July 2014 7:24am
Why should we make special allowances for Putin, simply because he has an inflated sense
of self importance and destiny?
Why did we make special allowances for George W. Bush who supposedly was in touch with the Almighty,
or his faithful sidekick Blair? Look what happened to Iraq and Libya, what is going on in Syria.
Do you think that the 'rule of law' was ever observed by the 'Coalition of the Willing'?
If you look at the map you may note that USA's border is thousands of miles away from not
just Ukraine but also Iran where in 1988 they downed an Iranian passenger jet flying wihtin
Iranian airspace.
The issue of Eastern Ukraine needs to be resolved by Ukraine but definitely not from the
position of power 'borrowed' from the USA. All other parties with direct interest - Russia and
the EU both of whom border Ukraine should have the observer status and strive to help the process.
Juvavum 25 July 2014 7:08am
The conflict, as Mr. Jenkins implicates, is as much "The West's" doing as Russia's. This is
true, but I don't buy into the righteous but misguided school prefect trope. Germany is keeping
a level head. Yes, but that is because it is the actual target. The one foreseeable casualty
of the Ukraine crisis is Germany's long term investment and development policy in Russia. Ukraine
is clearly being used by" The West", in fact the USA and the UK, to sabotage the Merkel-Putin
axis. I wouldn't be surprised if many of the "incidents" that constantly disrupt the peace process
were engineered by the CIA, and if the players, especially some in the Ukraine government, were
playing a double game.
KarmaGeddon 25 July 2014 7:24am
Russian demands were simple. Keep NATO off my backyard. But neocons and neo-nazis, drunk on
power, hoping to bring the world under their suzerainity, would not listen. There is still time
to come to terms with Russia through genuine give and take negotiations.
elbowgrease 25 July 2014 7:25am
Spot on, Simon. Isn't the West content to have Putin bend without making him suck? Or is
the US looking for an excuse to provoke the Russian bear into a conflict that could trigger
a thermonuclear war?
We need to remind ourselves that NOBODY can say for certain that the separatists brought
down the plane. The jury isn't even out yet because all the evidence - some of it already the
subject of dispute - is not yet in.
Both sides need to step back, take a deep breath and await the outcome of the official inquiry
- and meanwhile put the war drums away.
On the question of sanctions, they are not only useless but downright counter-productive
as they punish innocent and vulnerable populations who end up hating those who impose them rather
than their "guilty" regimes.
Jeremn elbowgrease 25 July 2014 11:03am
The media needs to stop being uncritical of assorted thugs just because they are "on our side".
In this respect I'm thinking of the Ukrainian government, which gets a free ride. They just
banned the Communist Party and the Party of the Regions is next (so any future parliament is
going to be ultra-nationalist), have launched an ATO and are killing civilians with grad rockets
and shelling. In Europe. Svoboda has ministers and controls five governorships (with oligarchs
in charge of two more, and president).
Where are the reprimands, where is the attempt to curb this Frankenstein's monster?
Popeyes 25 July 2014 7:32am
Despite The Ukrainian president saying that there are 'many radars and satellites' monitoring
the skies over Ukraine , Russia is the only country to unveil its radar readings, which appears
to show a fighter plane flanking the airliner before it crashed. The question as to why it was
diverted by Ukranian traffic control 200 miles off course and over a war zone has not been answered.
In fact Russia has had no response to any questions, and there appears to be a complete black
out of any response by the EU member states. It is farcically that although there is no evidence
against Russia, and the U.S has admitted as much , because of sanctions ordered by Washington
hundreds of people will loose their jobs, companies will fold and the European economy will
take a massive hit. The U.S economy won't suffer and it will be champagne all round as they
plan to flood Europe with expensive gas and energy. For the sake of the 300 people who died
on that plane there must be an impartial international investigation, and until there is I would
like to keep my job please.
oalexander 25 July 2014 7:34am
One of the few moderating pieces on the issue. On the other side, I have come to the reasonable
conviction, that Ukraine deliberately shot the aircraft down. Air control data do not disappear
nilly-willy. It was the separatists that were willing to guarantee safe access to the site,
whilst the Ukrainians did not. The quckly concocted, fake tapes. The US know all: it would be
unreasonable that they do not have a detailed awareness of what is going on in Ukraine, which
they did so much to get control of; they said they would have comprehensive data, but failed
to deliver and came up with social media gibberish instead.
My guess is, the Ukrainians sought the internationalisation of their civil war, which they
seemingly also have problems financing.
Check out
this story
by AP and compare the lame, pathetic and self-evident nonsense of these so-called "intelligence
officials" offer with the hard fact based presentation of the Russian Air Force Chief of
Staff.
Here is the full article with my comments in blue.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday that Russia was responsible
for "creating the conditions" that led to the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight
17, but they offered no evidence of direct Russian government involvement.
The intelligence officials were cautious in their assessment, noting that while the
Russians have been arming separatists in eastern Ukraine, the U.S. had no direct evidence
that the missile used to shoot down the passenger jet came from Russia.
The officials briefed reporters Tuesday under ground rules that their names not be used in
discussing intelligence related to last week's air disaster, which killed 298 people.
The plane was likely shot down by an SA-11 surface-to-air missile fired by Russian-backed
separatists in eastern Ukraine, the intelligence officials said, citing intercepts, satellite
photos and social media postings by separatists, some of which have been authenticated by U.S.
experts.
But the officials said they did not know who fired the missile or whether any Russian
operatives were present at the missile launch. They were not certain that the missile crew
was trained in Russia, although they described a stepped-up campaign in recent weeks by
Russia to arm and train the rebels, which they say has continued even after the downing of the
commercial jetliner.
In terms of who fired the missile, "we don't know a name, we don't know a rank and we're
not even 100 percent sure of a nationality," one official said, adding at another point,
"There is not going to be a Perry Mason moment here."
White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said the U.S. was still working
to determine whether the missile launch had a "direct link" to Russia, including whether
there were Russians on the ground during the attack and the degree to which Russians
may have trained the separatists to launch such a strike.
"We do think President Putin and the Russian government bears responsibility for the support
they provided to these separatists, the arms they provided to these separatists, the training
they provided as well and the general unstable environment in eastern Ukraine," Rhodes said
in an interview with CNN.
He added that heavy weaponry continues to flow into Ukraine from Russia following the downing
of the plane.
The intelligence officials said the most likely explanation for the downing was that
the rebels made a mistake. Separatists previously had shot down 12 Ukrainian military airplanes,
the officials said.
The officials made clear they were relying in part on social media postings and videos
made public in recent days by the Ukrainian government, even though they have not been
able to authenticate all of it. For example, they cited a video of a missile launcher said
to have been crossing the Russian border after the launch, appearing to be missing a missile.
But later, under questioning, the officials acknowledged they had not yet verified that
the video was exactly what it purported to be.
Despite the fuzziness of some details, however, the intelligence officials said the case
that the separatists were responsible for shooting down the plane was solid. Other scenarios
- such as that the Ukrainian military shot down the plane - are implausible, they said.
No Ukrainian surface-to-air missile system was in range. (That is a lie as proven by the
Russian satellite imagery and signal intercepts which prove that they Ukies had plenty of batteries
freshly brought right next to the combat zone even though the Novorissians had just one Su-25
close air support aircraft in their entire inventory)
From satellites, sensors and other intelligence gathering, officials said, they know where
the missile originated - in separatist-held territory - and what its flight path was. But if
they possess satellite or other imagery of the missile being fired, they did not release it
Tuesday. A graphic they made public depicts their estimation of the missile's flight
path with a green line. The jet's flight path was available from air traffic control data.
In the weeks before the plane was shot down, Russia had stepped up its arming and training
of the separatists after the Ukrainian government won a string of battlefield victories. The
working theory is that the SA-11 missile came from Russia, although the U.S. doesn't have proof
of that, the officials said.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power said last week that "because of the technical
complexity of the SA-11, it is unlikely that the separatists could effectively operate the system
without assistance from knowledgeable personnel. Thus, we cannot rule out technical assistance
from Russian personnel in operating the systems," she said.
Asked about evidence, one of the senior U.S. intelligence officials said it was conceivable
that Russian paramilitary troops are operating in eastern Ukraine, but that there was no direct
link from them to the missile launch.
Asked why civilian airline companies were not warned about a possible threat, the officials
said they did not know the rebels possessed SA-11 missiles until after the Malaysian airliner
was shot down. (WHAT? Even I new this, just by reading the reports about the seized Buks,
reports which even included photos. They are really insulting our collective intelligence again!)
Have you counted the "caveat words"? I counted fifteen (depending on what you want to include).
Notice that they consider the Ukie missile as "implausible" but that they never explain why
this would be implausible. And they admit relying in part on social media and Ukie government info?
How absolutely utterly pathetic. I mean - I feel sorry for them. For any self-respecting intelligence
official to admit such things is to commit a seppuku of your professional pride. It's admitting
that you are an amateur and a drooling moron. And here is the deal - I very much doubt that these
men are amateurs or morons. So, yet again, they were back-stabbed by imbecile politicians like Obama
and Power who just are not used to consulting with their own specialist before flapping their lips
and nevermind if they make an entire intelligence community look like cretins.
I can barely imaging how much the US intelligence community must *hate* this administration. Can
you imagine what it must be to be a highly experienced US State Department or DIA career officer
and listen to how the Russians constantly berate the US government for being "un-professional" and
"amateurish" only to then hear that kind of absolute utter nonsense spoken in your name.
Look, in this game I am 100% on Russia's side, but part of me, on a (ex-) professional level
if you want, feels the pain that I am sure many career intelligence officers feel today in the USA
a>
But of course the big news here is this: the US fairy tale about Putin the terrorist is falling
down in flames. Yet again the Neocons by their sheer arrogance, hubris and boundless stupidity manged
to lie their way into a corner from which there is no exit. Not that the US had much street-cred
anyway, not after Colin Powell's dishwasher powder in a vial at the UNSC. But, of course, there
is bad, very bad, even worse and outright terrible. But now the US has reached the "terminal" stage.
The AngloZionists sure had this one coming.
The Saker
PS: in the meantime, check the zoo that the freaks in Kiev made of their "Parliament":
The first apparent hard evidence that
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17
was brought down by a surface-to-air missile is emerging from the crash site in eastern Ukraine,
after experts confirmed on Monday there were signs of shrapnel damage to the aircraft.
The federalists fighting in east Ukraine just took down two more SU-25 ground attack fighters
that were bombing their positions. The weapons used against these planes are either simple air-defense
guns or short ranged missiles unlike the missiles that allegedly took down the Malaysian passenger
jet.
The case the Obama administration made against the federalists and Russia in connection with
that MH-17 flight is completely falling apart.
Even the aggressive State Department spokesperson
has to admit (vid) there is no real evidence at all. The "mountain of evidence" Secretary of
State Kerry talked about is nothing but doctored photos and sound files provided by the Ukrainian
coup government. One photo, for example, is supposed to show a missile system in federalists hands
in a town in east Ukraine. But two reporters asking locals there
can not find
anyone who has seen the bulky and loud system. The photo is therefore likely a montage.
After being public criticized for showing no real evidence the Obama administration trotted out
some "senior intelligence officials" who then
admitted that they have nothing, NOTHING, to connect the case to Russia and only vague circumstantial
"social media evidence" that federalists COULD have downed the jet:
But the officials said they did not know who fired the missile or whether any Russian operatives
were present at the missile launch. They were not certain that the missile crew was trained
in Russia, although they described a stepped-up campaign in recent weeks by Russia to arm and
train the rebels, which they say has continued even after the downing of the commercial jetliner.
In terms of who fired the missile, "we don't know a name, we don't know a rank and we're
not even 100 percent sure of a nationality," one official said, adding at another point, "There
is not going to be a Perry Mason moment here," a referenc to a fictional detective who solved
mysteries.
The senior intelligence officials said spy agencies were not aware that an SA-11 system was
in eastern Ukraine until the attack had happened.
So the alleged transfer of such a big weapon system from Russia was either not observable for
the multi-billion dollar, all seeing, all hearing U.S. intelligence or it never happened. Case closed.
But the neolibcons in the Obama administration do not despair yet. The murky Ukrainian company
that hired Vice President Biden's son is now
paying more lobbyists in
Washington. The bribes will flow in bigger amounts. The lies from the Obama administration,
and especially from Kerry, will continue as its tries everything possible to restart a Cold War
against Russia or, if possible, even a hot one.
Let the Europeans bleed. As long as the U.S. is safe everything is hunky dory.
brian
"Russian audio recording experts revealed over the weekend that the intercepts invoked by
Kiev and its Western supporters turn out to be FAKE. Reputed digital sound analyst Nikolai Popov
and his expert team examined the files made public by the Kiev intelligence services, and they
found that the files had been DOCTORED from separate and UNRELATED conversations.
On first hearing, the alleged conversations tend to implicate the self-defence militia in
firing a missile at the passenger plane. But on closer examination, the digital fingerprints
show that the files were fabricated, taken from separate recordings and spliced together to
give the IMPRESSION of integral conversations.
Moreover – and this is crucial – the sound analysis of digital data shows that the tapes
were engineered the day BEFORE Flight MH17 was seemingly hit by a missile and blown out of the
sky.
This latest discovery makes for some incontrovertible and deeply unsettling conclusions:
firstly, parties were involved in DELIBERATELY FORGING the files with the purpose of FRAMING
others – the self-defence militia and Moscow; secondly, and more disturbingly, the people who
faked the files MUST HAVE KNOWN THAT THE AIRLINER WAS GOING TO BE HIT with a missile, or some
other catastrophic external force, in order to bring it down with all the horrific loss of life
entailed."
describing Ukrainian fighter planes
hiding behind passenger planes to bomb the city.
So the pro-Russians knew the Ukrainian government was trying to do this and did their best
not to fall into the trap.
bevin
In 2000 the price of oil was about thirty dollars. Today it is around $100. The main beneficiaries
of this price revolution are marginal hydrocarbon producers: the frackers and the shale/oil
sand miners, whose production costs are so high that production at less than $40 a barrel is
uneconomical.
Perhaps this is why the Canadian government, a jointly owned subsidiary of the oil companies,
is so anxious to impose sanctions on Russia which will immediately increase oil and gas prices
globally.
Those benefiting from the tragedy involving the airliner also include a wide range of anti-EU
("Fuck the EU!") interests, including those who regard European manufacturing and technology
as the main competition to US firms. It is no accident that the neo-cons, as a political force,
were organised around the Senator from Boeing, after whom the international neo-con organisation
the Henry M Jackson Society is named. Opposition to Airbus and other European industries, including
the French shipyards that built the Mistral cruiser for Russia, is extremely excited at the
prospect of cutting off or controlling the energy supplies for the German auto manfacturers,
for example.
And then there is a significant body of opinion, which includes the Polish ultra nationalists,
which sees the crippling of Germany's economy as a desirable object.
Finally there is the reserve currency question: Russia could easily arrange barter and euro/rouble
deals which would cut the dollar out of its gas trade with Europe. This would be of particular
benefit to the EU economies, which already enjoy significant advantages, over the US, in dealing
with Russia and China. It would be a fundamental boost too, to efforts to replace the IMF and
World Bank duopoly.
thepanzer
Zero Hedge is reporting Putin may be calling back the Duma for an emergency session. Lots of
speculation on what for. The next few days will be very interesting.
Also, I need a bag of popcorn to watch the western claims deflate in real time. My assumption
is that the European leadership's own Intel, combined with what might have been shared via Russia,
had them telling the US back-channel that they weren't willing to lie to their publics' and
risk falling on their swords again like with the bogus Iraqi WMD intelligence. Likewise I wonder
if team Obama got push back from the US intel agencies and military who weren't willing to go
forward with such an obvious pack of lies.
Care to place odds on Seymour Hersh or Bob Woodward being passed data from disaffected beltway
insiders on the real scoop in the next few months? I'm sure there are a LOT of republican generals
who'd love to knife the administration if they think they can get away with it. Leaking data
that the Ukrainians themselves shot it down would be a massive blow to Obama's already defunct
credibility on the world stage.
US policy is made by people who think that what works in the United States will work everywhere
else. What works in the US are poll-tested smear campaigns carried by mass advertisement. It''s
worked for the past 60 years and especially since Lee Atwater perfected it for Bush I in the
1988 campaign. American politics is all tactics and no strategy. So far the Big Lie has worked
pretty well at home: abroad, not so much, which is why the Administration are at a loss in situations
where they do not have the option of applying overwhelming unansweable force. They are in an
ocean where they do not know how to swim. Rice and Kerry are beyond pathetic, and Obama is just
behind. I guess they didn't pay attention during the False Flag module in their foreign policy
course. No matter what JSorr thinks, I believe these people are working above their pay grade.
Why Can't the MOTU get a more competent crew of flunkies. It's not like their is any shortage
of people ready to sell out their country for 15 minutes of fame and a cushy foundation presidency
after.
karlof1
In his article today, Pepe Escobar notes the biggest piece of evidence that proves no BUK
missile was fired--no thick, easily visible contrail from the alleged missile that would sill
have hung in the air when MH17 hit the ground--and this lack of evidence has many proponents,
myself included. "The damaged MH17 starboard jet engine suggests a shape charge from an
air-to-air missile - and not a Buk; that's consistent with the Russian Ministry of Defense
presentation graphically highlighting an Ukrainian SU-25 shadowing MH17.
Increasingly, the Buk scenario - hysterically peddled by the Empire of Chaos - is being discarded.
Not to mention, again, that not a single eyewitness saw the very graphic, thick missile
trace that would have been clearly visible had a Buk been used."http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/CEN-01-230714.html
Pretty devastating footage, the missile warhead with fragmentation shrapnel must have exploded
right underneath cockpit at front side of plane -
photo. [port front of cockpit = left side]
Another a close parallel between Ghouta and MH17 is the resultant caterwauling when the false
flag failed to fly. There is a
story in the NYT today about the petulant cries emanating from Kiev now that it is apparent
that Germany is not going to be stampeded into leveling more sanctions on Russia.
Obama's consigliere Denis McDonough was in Berlin trying yet again to line Merkel up against
Moscow. It is not going to happen. Blowing apart a passenger jet didn't work, and neither did
gassing a bunch of women and children. But the U.S. and its various clients and proxies will
keep trying. We can count on that.
Noirette
MH17 is a case of get in and early with your version (US) of events.
Remember Benghazi? First it was a pro-muslim demo that went out of control and on the rampage.
I and two others on this board immediately said BS, because it was presented as a reaction to
an anti-Islam film which, I have forgotten the details now, only had a mild trailer, was not
available / seen by anyone, or not even produced yet. In any case such a demo would not kill
ambassador "Stevie."
Then it was downscaled in the news to a 'small demo' that confused the situation and finally
- now, there was no demo at all ...
The public has only the first glaring headlines and they don't forget them, which is
of course the point. Putin as Hitler is to be impressed on the public's mind-set is similar.
Sure kicking in open doors, many here are aware of such manipulations.
However, it grows thin when one has to back down in the space of a few days. Although one
can write it off with 'confusion on the ground', 'inadequate information' (I don't think so),
etc. Both the US and Russia know or suspect what happened to MH17. But revealing is a piece
of a long term now gruesome political hysterical war, fought for now in the MSM.
My reading is that beyond prop. purposes against Russia (a new cold war or boiling up to hot,
and so on which distracts from the ME failures and Israel, and most important, keeping the EU
from aligning with Russia or China, the BRICS, etc.) is that the US cannot admit it's mistake
in accidentally falling into the Ukrainian cauldron, which is at heart a fight between fiefdoms
and oligarchs with all the private underground hoopla which the US (neo-con-libs..) cannot possibly
understand or manage, beyond financing their temporary 'champions' or 'allies' etc.
Sure, the US has been meddling in the ex-USSR and the 'Stans, the human rights democracy
etc. BS, not denying that, but when called on to step up to the plate, get really involved,
there is not much on hand except obfuscation, favoritism towards one or another 'partner' (vassal,
stage-front puppet, paid off goons shills on the take etc.), with massive destruction, which
serves the arms-milit-contractors-big Corps and the MSM. This scorched-earth policy provides
quick and massive profits and self-felt kudos short-term for some, but then what?
As for MH17, all the guff about ground to air missiles was clamoured because that was
the only way the separatists could be blamed. That was planned, from about 3 - 10 months ago,
imho.
How it was brought down is another discussion. it would be good to get to the nitty gritty
of that.
Here's an alternative theory (and only a theory) about what happened to MH17; the reason
why everyone is indulging in all this bigoted Russia-bashing. The elected junta in Kiev were
spitting nails that the ragtag of separatists had shot down not one but two of their military
aircraft, using a Buk surface-to-air missile system that may or may not have been stolen from
the junta, or came from unofficial channels in Russia. But you see, the separatists aren't quite
as stupid or clumsy as everyone has made out. They know very well that an anti-aircraft missile
battery has to be treated with respect - for PR reasons, the last thing they want to do is bring
down a civilian airliner. Now though, the first scandal was that civilian aircraft were still
allowed into eastern Ukrainian airspace, after two planes had been shot down. But this is where
it gets quite dark. Someone in the junta came up with the idea of sending a civilian airliner
near to the limit of the new exclusion zone (this is a matter of public record; MH17 was told
by Ukrainian air-traffic control to fly at 33,000 feet, although it had requested to fly at
35,000 feet; UATC records were seized by Ukrainian govt officials after the crash and there's
a serious likelihood of 'water damage'). Reports vary, but one or two Ukrainian fighter jets
then appear to have been scrambled to 'escort' MH17 - but this was a death trap. It meant that
the Buk system on the ground picked up the radar signature of the jet/jets; a missile was launched;
the jets peeled off and the missile hit the airliner. The junta has a propaganda victory at
the cost of 300 innocent lives.
Russian's to be stupid enough to supply a bunch of drunk thugs with SA-11s
I am sure that the US Navy personnel aboard the USS Vincennes were all extremely well trained,
professonal and cold sober when they shot down Iran Air 655.
Both tragedies prove that war is unpredictable and you just can't be sure what happens when
people start fighting, whatever the reason.
Nothing can justify what happened, though I sincerely hope it was an accident, not a cold
blooded murder. My heart goes out to the families and friends of those who died in downing of
MH17. However, I can't help wondering that there were no UN Security Council resolutions, mass
hysteria and accusations, which we see now, when the Iranian passenger plane was shot down all
those years ago. Why? After all it was shot in Iranian airspace by a warship of a foreign power
thousands of miles from its home shore.
Lastly - the whole situation would not have happened if there was no meddling in the affairs
of Ukraine. Both Russia and the West should from the onset of the crisis have strived for a
politicfal solution. The rebels are ethnic Russians living in Ukraine, Poroshenko should seek
a compromise rather than military force alone. Gaza is best proof that even an overwhelming
military force does not work.
And - by the way - it seems that USA has about as much control over Israel as Russia over
the rebels in East Ukraine, and both support their proteges with equal zest. Pot and kettle
comes to mind.
The 32,000' upper limit of restricted airspace would not be for protection against SAMs that
could go to 50,000'+, rather as a procedural means of separating Ukrainian military aircraft
from overflying airliners on established air routes. All it meant was that controllers could
not direct airliners lower into airspace where Su25's were milling about.
The SA-11 system
that fired the weapon appears to have been only a TELAR component of the complete system, with
limited surveillance radar and no intel feeds from higher up as would be the case with the apparently
missing TAR and command/control vehicles (ask Google). All that the TELAR operators with their
basic 100Km range (6 minutes in a 777) targeting radar (elevation dependent) would 'see' would
be a radar 'blip' away from the established air route (why off-route ??) and maybe as
rumored in company with a Su25 blip.
The missile is a 'semi-active homer' which navigates itself to achieve a constant angle to
the largest (brightest) radar reflection bouncing back at it from the TELAR which is 'lighting
up' the target for the missile. Constant angle = assured collision; try it in your car.
If there was a nearby Su25, then all that the missile would 'see' is not the multiple 'blips'
from each aircraft but the brightest one if the TELARs targeting radar lobe lit up both the
Su25 and the 777, which would have been the huge radar cross-section of the 777 and the missile
would compute a constant angle path to that aircraft alone.
An off-route aircraft, decisions made in the heat of battle by a tired crew, three guys in
the TELAR doing group-think, missile seeker electronic logic working differently to operator
aiming head logic ? Google up James Reason's "Holes-in-the-Cheese" theory of accidents.
Malaysian Airlines routing their aircraft into this very feasible situation, where Ukrainian
aircraft had recently been shot down well above MANPAD limits ?? The fact, that after the accident
MA sent it's aircraft over Syria and Iraq, is an indicator that while they are aware of threats,
they are basically, just dumb.
Passenger plane was flying by. 1:16 And Ukrainian attack aircraft hid behind it. Jun 18, 2014'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The girl from Sloviansk says:
"1:07 Terrible things are happening.
1:09 For example an incident that happened recently. Passenger plane was flying by.
1:16 And Ukrainian attack aircraft hid behind it.
1:22 Than he lowered his altitude a bit and dropped bombs on residential sector of Semenovka
town.
1:27 Than he regained the altitude and hid behind the passenger plane again. Than he left.
1:31 They wanted to provoke the militia to shoot at the passenger
plane. There would be a global catastrophe. Civilians would have died.
1:49 Than they would say that terrorists here did it. There are no terrorists here. There
are regular people here,"
Published on Jun 18, 2014
Winifred Kiddle -> Per Sonne, 23 July 2014 8:54am
there's no real evidence. Investigation hasn't been carried out. Only evidence has been on
social media. Why isn't the US putting up their evidence? They've got spies, they've got satellites.
Aye?
I'd have thought that overthrowing the elected government for a fascist regime that effectively
declared war on their population might have been the major 'condition creator'.
Well, that's a DIFFERENT PR game to be played. I think, actually, it was in the US's interest
get this airplane indecent out of the way lest other unfortunate questions started getting asked.
Now we can go back to sanctions against the bad-guys who overthrew the peacefully elected
government in the Ukraine.
cirqueliker -> someoneionceknew, 23 July 2014 12:10am
The Ukraine isn't a fascist regime. No one is buying the use of that word, the propaganda
coming from Russia has failed.
The Ukraine is far more democratic than Putin's Russia and people in the rest of the world
want to see it perservere and not let themselves be overrun by a man driven by Soviet nostalgia
and KGB ethics.
Jools12 -> cirqueliker, 23 July 2014 12:18am
It isn't? Then explain why there are Neo Nazis holding ministry positions in Kiev's government
Well actually, it was Ukrainian air control who directed Boeing into war zone - not Russia..
It is US and EU who are providing money to Kiev regime to finance the war against eastern part
of country clearly Not supporting coup in Kiev.
Even more to say... It was US embassy who
engineered coup d'etat in Kiev, supporting neonazi's and triggered all this mess.
Yet more to say...
BUK launcher is part of defense network and requires radar to give it a target coordinates
and vector.
At altitude 33000 and speed almost a thousand km/h - it Requires TWO radars at least to triangulate
and track target.
Rebels simply don't have trained teams and Hardware to accomplish such hit.
The launcher itself has capability to track targets up to 4km altitudes and 10km distances
only.
Even if launcher that fell into rebels hands from Ukrainian army would Worked.... it is a
huge problem to find qualified operator to this system.
It was adopted by Russian army just in 2008.. Ukrainian army operating older version of it developed
by USSR.. which didn't came out from testing.
Actually, Sceptic12 has a very good point, and your attempts at grade 9 science or asking how
the rebels shot down other planes are meaningless (they were at much lower altitudes and did
not require sophisticated guidance systems).
The Buk system requires three vehicles, and specialist
operators.
So if the rebels or the Russians themselves did it, there are only two possibilities.
If the rebels (as was reported) captured a Buk system from the Ukrainians it is unbelievable
that they could break its security code and provide a specialist team capable of operating it
within a matter of days. Just pointing on a shoot and hope basis would hit nothing.
If it was a system supplied by the Russians with their own specialists, it is rather odd that
they would not have contact with Russian air defence control in one of their most closely monitored
border areas (i.e. be capable of tracking and distinguishing civil from military aircraft)
So wat exactly did the Russians have to gain from shooting down a civilian aircraft.
The Ukrainians on the other hand have form on this. They have (older) Buks, and in October 2001
they managed to shoot down Siberia Airlines flight 1812 over the Black Sea with 66 people on
board.
some or all of these scenarios are possible. I just wonder which is more likely. To go back
to the original point, however, you do need three vehicles and specialist operators to use that
system with any chance of success.
Alexander Andreev -> crunch, 23 July 2014 6:38am
As far as I know all other aircraft was shot down using portable launchers at much lower altitudes.
There are NO confirmed hits at higher altitudes.
As for the BUK complex - you can read about it yourself. It requires FOUR different vehicles
to be operational. It contains of a command vehicle, a radar, a launcher and a loader. Probably
you can ditch the loader as long as you don't need to reload the launcher but it won't fire
at all without the other three. There are no sightings let alone verified evidence of rebels
having anything except the launcher. And even some images of the launcher are confirmed to be
made in Ukranian-controlled territory, including the one showing the launcher with incomplete
missile set.
Of course there is already another bullshit theory being pushed in by we know who which blames
Russia of transferring a launcher vehicle in the rebel territory complete with operators and
leaving radar and command vehicles right at the border then using them to lock on the airliner
and firing the missile remotely. And then recovering the launcher vehicle leaving no evidence.
While technically it might be possible it completely lacks motive and evidence.
As for the BUK complex - you can read about it yourself. It requires FOUR different vehicles
to be operational. It contains of a command vehicle, a radar, a launcher and a loader.
Rubbish. A TELAR (transporter erector launcher and radar) vehicle – which combines a radar
and launcher – is perfectly capable of acquiring a target and shooting without any other components
of the system. A whole BUK battalion would also include a command radar vehicle for improved
target seeking and identification, and TEL launcher/re-loaders without radars, but the TELAR
vehicle is capable of operating alone.
A TELAR vehicle working without a command radar would not be able to identify IFF signals
given out by planes to identify themselves – probably why this accident happened.
Yoda00 22 July 2014 11:55pm
Here we have the US judging how Russia is responding to this. When the US shot down an Iranian
Airliner from a ship that was illegally in Iranian territorial waters, it took the administration
years to acknowledge that the USS Vincennes was indeed inside Iranian territorial waters, and
many years after that to quietly settle out of court with no apology or acceptance of wrongdoing.
US Newspapers argued sanctimoniously about how there were mitigating circumstances in their
editorials - The same newspapers that unconditionally condemned a prior incident where the Soviet
Union shot down a Korean airliner. Pot. Kettle.
CienfuegosHeroico -> BrooklynNonHipster 23 July 2014 1:06am
Actually, BrooklynNonHipster, I think Yoda00's post was relevant, if not necessarily quite on
point. Of course, we should withhold judgment until the facts are actually known about MH17,
but for argument's sake let's say Russian-backed rebels did accidentally shoot down the plane.
What should the U.S. response be? As Yoda00 pointed out, the U.S. once accidentally shot down
an Iranian airliner (1988); in fact, a similar number of people were killed and an initial cover-up,
or at least obfuscation, was apparently attempted. At no point did the U.S. suggest that they
should be demonized for doing so or should receive sanctions for doing so, and indeed, the U.S.
has to this day refused to apologize or admit wrongdoing (although they did, eventually, pay
compensation for the families). Why then should the U.S. demand anything different from any
other nation-state in the same situation they were once in?
CienfuegosHeroico -> Yoda00 23 July 2014 1:29am
Although not a common occurrence, there is a history of civilian aircraft being shot down in
conflict situations, usually by accident. In most cases the guilty party, when guilt was admitted,
issued apologies, blamed the incident as some unfortunate outcome of whatever tensions were
happening, and the tragedy was left at that. Sometimes compensation gets paid. Certainly not
a satisfying pattern of response, but that is the historical precedence. Why should Russia have
to abide by a different standard than any other nation, if indeed their proxies were responsible
for this?
Interestingly, this isn't the first time the U.S. and their friends have been able to score
cheap political points against Russia out of such tragedies; after the Soviet shoot-down of
KAL 007 in 1983, Reagan was able to use the emotion arising from the incident to deploy more
advanced nuclear weapons in West Germany, despite flagging support for such a move, thus dangerously
increasing cold war tensions.
Nikolla, 23 July 2014 12:01am
So, not enough "facts" to blame Russia?
That's pity, for the presstitutes already did their best, as usual, and so enthusiastically.
Somebody should compensate the western "journalists" for their time and efforts.
OldSwingingVoter -> Nikolla, 23 July 2014 3:50am
So Russia is the bad guy again. Forget about the 600 plus, women and children mainly, that
have been slaughtered by Israel. America cautions them, of course, but continues to give them
more than $4Billion aid every year. And of course if there's any criticism, you are accused
of anti-semitism. What a hard luck world we live in.
HansVonDerHeyde -> JeremyinOz, 23 July 2014 4:18pm
While the whole media is reporting about More Sanctions and blaming everything on the "Evil
Aggressor Communist"
Civilians continue to die. Ukrainian Jets airstrikes in Luhansk July 21.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQH8orMZyWc
And In July 18 ,Army Shelling Luhansk. more civilians casualties.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATqVXKQ6-ns
http://cs619931.vk.me/v619931145/d0ab/J5jJo4o4WdM.jpg
http://cs619931.vk.me/v619931145/d0b2/Yzhka6dZ3l8.jpg
But hey -- ! Who cares , they are not Dutch or Germans....So dont worry....
ucic, 23 July 2014 12:05am
MH17: US intelligence says Russia 'created conditions' for plane disaster
US officials stop short of blaming crash directly on Moscow and say separatists likely
shot down plane by accident
Derisory! Since the tragedy, and before the release of any credible evidence to confirm who
was responsible, we have had politicians from the US & their UK & EU lapdogs, in tandem with
a supine (or, what appears to be a castrated) MSM, screaming and pointing their fingers at Russia.
Now, after the US intelligence state: "rebels likely shot down MH17 'by mistake,'" we are being
dripfed the line that the "fault lies with Russia," purely in order to save the faces of inept
political leaders.
Meanwhile, close to the site of the crash, the Kiev junta are still busy killing their fellow
countrymen in the region.
US intelligence says Russia 'created conditions' for plane disaster
LOL --
In February 2014, the US mounted one of its "colour" coups against the elected government
in Ukraine, exploiting genuine protests against corruption in Kiev. Obama's national security
adviser Victoria Nuland personally selected the leader of an "interim government". She nicknamed
him "Yats". Vice President Joe Biden came to Kiev, as did CIA Director John Brennan. The
shock troops of their putsch were Ukrainian fascists.
For the first time since 1945, a neo-Nazi, openly anti-Semitic party controls key areas
of state power in a European capital. No Western European leader has condemned this revival
of fascism in the borderland through which Hitler's invading Nazis took millions of Russian
lives. They were supported by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), responsible for the massacre
of Jews and Russians they called "vermin". The UPA is the historical inspiration of the
present-day Svoboda Party and its fellow-travelling Right Sector. Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok
has called for a purge of the "Moscow-Jewish mafia" and "other scum", including gays, feminists
and those on the political left.
Whether the "rebels", Kiev or whomever shot down the passenger jet remains to be publicly
proven. Empirically testable evidence and not conjecture, dogma or propaganda will rule the
day.
Until that point, nothing that the US, Kieve, Moscow, EU etal officialdom says is valid.
1410 23 July 2014 12:09am
If Russia is responsible for MH17, the US is responsible for the slaughter of civilians in Gaza
and the perpetration of war crimes (shooting children, shooting ambulances, shelling hospitals,
targeting Mosques, targeting sports stadiums, targeting journalists, targeting schools). I think
the US crimes are bigger.
In terms of Means Opportunity and Motive (MOM) , it is more likely that the US-, UK-, EU-, Australia-
and neo-Nazi-backed Ukrainian Government forces were responsible for the MH17 atrocity. Unlike
the rag-tag Separatists (1) they had Buk missile systems in the vicinity and skilled operators;
(2) they have leaped to join the US-led anti-Russia lynch mob with fabricated evidence; (3)
they immediately benefited from the US-led global media blitz; (4) the MH17 downing provided
cover for the war criminal invasion of Gaza by US-backed Apartheid Israel (600 Palestinians
dead, 4,000 wounded, 100,000 homeless in response to zero (0 ) Israelis killed by Gaza rockets
in the year before the invasion) ; (5) in 2001 they had actually shot down a Siberian Airlines
passenger airliner Flight 1812 with a missile killing all 78 on board (Google "Siberian Airlines
Flight 1812"); and (6) Russian Defence has provided evidence for a Ukrainian warplane shadowing
MH17.
In contrast, the pro-Russia Rebel Ukrainians had not been supplied with Buk missiles, lacked
skilled operators, had nothing to gain by this atrocity and , contrary to utterly offensive
media reportage, were the only people attempting to secure the bodies.(the Ukrainian Government
has escalated military action in the vicinity.
Not all the American intelligence community thinks the rebels did it. Word is out that those
operating the BUK battery most likely to have fired a missile were in Ukrainian Army uniform.
I'm talking about the LA Times, which says that intelligence points to UA uniforms, but now
with the idea that they were UA defectors working for the rebels.
"U.S. intelligence agencies have so far been unable to determine the nationalities or
identities of the crew that launched the missile. U.S. officials said it was possible the
SA-11 [anti-aircraft missile] was launched by a defector from the Ukrainian military who
was trained to use similar missile systems."
Slowly, slowly, the story unravels.
Next we might hear that they were one of the AA Regiments sent by Kiev to Donetsk in early
July.
I note the US is slowly backing away from who to blame for the
downing of the MH 17 . First , it was Russia conspiring and directing , then Separatists operating
a Russian Missile System supervised by
a Russian expert , now the Separatists , due to lack of training , made
a "mistake" in firing the missile . How do you make a mistake in a War
zone ?
I would like to fill in the blanks , if I can use Russian intelligence .
The Russians sighted a SU 35 fighter jet operated by an Ukrainian
pilot at 20,000 m heading towards the MH 17 at 30,000 m . I would
like to hear the Americans refute this opposing statement . Just a
comment would suffice --
The fighter could have attracted the attention of the missile to the slower easier target of
the airliner, if so, the fault of the coup instated government in Kiev.
Good post. I would like to say that the notion that the rebels can fire a BUK missile by accident
is total BS. It takes tracking and in fact coordination with air traffic control to down a jet
from that height. I'm not prepared to say who did it, but it certainly is within the realm of
possibility that the Ukrainian's did it, but I think you are seeing the US backing away from
the accusations.
Ukrainans have clearly lied about not having BUK missiles in the area, and the fighter jet
in the vicinity of the the Malaysian jet's flight path. The Russians have produced satellite
images of Ukrainian BUK installations, unlike the Americans who still have not. Robert Parry
reports on consortium.news and seems to have good sources within the CIA, that US intelligence
has images of soldiers in Ukrainian army uniforms firing the missiles. This happened in the
middle of the day, and it strains credulity to think that the US doesn't have satellite images
of the launch. Why not release them if it bolsters their case?
The Daily Mail published a selfie of Ukrainian army regular guarding a BUK installation as
the "smoking gun" of Rebel complicity. They didn't realize that it was actually a Ukrainian
army regular until readers and bloggers corrected them. So once again, Ukrainians caught in
a lie about BUK missiles.
Alexander Andreev -> davros49 23 July 2014 7:09am
You are right calling these missiles "sophisticated". And this is the major problem with
the theory blaming rebels for accidentally shooting down a wrong plane by pressing a wrong button.
Because these systems are so complex there is no chance they could fire it without trained operators
and at a random target. It just does not fire accidentally.
And this makes it disturbing. When someone is accidentally shot with a shotgun while walking
in a forest with a hunt going nearby this is believable. When someone is shot with a sniper
rifle while standing alone on a empty square while wearing civilian clothes and holding umbrella
it is much less believable that the shooter has mistaken the victim for a enemy soldier.
Russian companies including energy giants Rosneft and Gazprom need to refinance nearly $112bn
within the next four years, something that sanctions could make difficult
Russian companies are facing a $112bn wall of debt over the next four years, according to rating
agency Moody's, as Western powers move to strangle credit lines to the country.
The US has already imposed sanctions that effectively shut the energy giants Rosneft, Novatek,
and Gazprombank out of US debt markets.
That could make the refinancing of $111.6bn (£65.4bn) worth of debts due between now and 2018
more complicated.
Moody's said that while companies on the periphery of the eurozone received much of the focus
last year, the refinancing concerns may shift to Russia, which accounts for about 10pc of the total
European debt pile of $1.06trn
Pressure is mounting on the EU to match the punitive US measures on Russian corporates, extending
the strangle hold to the European credit market as a response to the downing of a Malaysian passenger
jet.
Indeed, European banks have "a lot of money at stake" in the Ukraine crisis, according to analysts
at UBS. The institutions covered by its researchers have lent more than €60bn (£47bn) to Russia
and Ukraine, excluding "any investment banking activity", the Swiss lender said.
The banks covered by UBS most exposed to any credit selloff in the reg ntext of US sanctions
and a weakening economic outlook in Russia," said Jean-Michel Carayon, Senior Vice President in
Moody's Corporate Finance Group
It seems to me that people within the US military an no doubt some parts of government have
pushed back against the current US line that 'It's da Russians wot Dun it!' because it would
unravel all sorts of important links and inter-dependencies. I have little doubt that the Kremlin
has told the US behind the scenes that if they don't slap their winkle back in the shorts that
Russia will withdraw all sorts of cooperation from intelligence sharing, proliferation, Iran
etc. and leave the US to drown. I also wonder what China might have said too, though something
along the lines of 'such actions and accusations without clear evidence would be contrary to
healthy ties' and probably some European countries have also told the US diplomatically to FO.
It really smells like the US has seriously overplayed its hand these last few days and has
damaged itself. The US reality bubble is finally starting to wobble, but what would it take
to make it pop???
The Russian government did not immediately comment on the downed fighter planes. But a spokesman
for the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a forceful statement on Wednesday accusing the Ukrainian
government of making false accusations against Russia, specifically in relation to the downed
passenger jet.
"Instead of cooperating with a thorough and unbiased international investigation into the causes
of the accident, the results of which would then be made public, with maximum transparency, the
Kiev authorities daily and hourly come up em>Malaysian experts pored over smaller pieces of wreckage
for a second day, and expressed surprise "at how much access we have," Mr. Bociurkiw added, but
as for other foreign experts, "it's not like our door is being broken down."
In a clear sky, if the Su-25 was as close as the Russian radar plot indicates, it is likely the
pilots of MH17 would have seen it, and would have communicated this to Ukrainian air control on
the ground. The record of that communication, the radar tracking data at the Ukrainian air control
centre, and communication from the air controller in charge of MH17 are all in the safekeeping of
the Ukrainian authorities. A
website posting from the Ukrainian State Air Traffic Services Enterprise (UkSATSE) promises
to "provide all necessary data from ground facilities, evidence and assistance in order to determine
the actual causes of the tragedy". So far they have not released the evidence.
Oleksandr Sokolenko (right), chief of the Dniepropetrovsk air control centre, refuses to say
what has become of his records of the July 17 operations, and he won't comment on what he knows.
Whether Poroshenko has reviewed this evidence isn't known.
The same data, including flight information and voice communications between cockpit and Ukrainian
ground control, are also held by the black boxes from MH17. Malaysian Airlines executives took charge
of the boxes from the Ukrainian separatists on Monday. They have been freighted by a Belgian Air
Force jet to a laboratory in the UK accredited by the International Civil Aviation Organization
(ICAO). These data have yet to be decoded; verified as authentic and complete; then published. The
process may take months.
So what really happened? A crew fired an SA-11 at a target they believed to be a military attacker,
and hit MH17 by mistake. The missile was made in Russia and supplied to the Ukraine by Russia. Whether
the crew was from the Ukrainian military, or from the separatists, is not yet known. If they were
Ukrainian forces, they are likely to have believed they were defending against a Russian military
attack they had been expecting as retaliation for Ukrainian artillery shelling across the Russian
frontier last week.
If they were Ukrainian separatists, they are likely to have believed they were defending their
positions in and around Donetsk and Lugansk from combined air and ground force attack.
The Russian and US intelligence versions now agree the missile shot was a mistake committed
by men who thought they were in the middle of combat. The difference between the two versions
remains who fired. The evidence available should be conclusive on this point. For the time being,
the US intelligence officers say they aren't sure.
If the US withholds its satellite pictures of the missile launch, and if the Ukrainian authorities
withhold the air control tapes of the radar tracks, radar screen shots, and cockpit communications,
then the preponderance of the evidence shifts - and the probability grows that it was the Ukrainian
military who fired.
Now the fact the the plane was from Holland makes a lot more sense...
The mayor of the Dutch city Hilversum Peter Broertjes in an interview to Radio 1 called "throw
away" from the country the daughter of Vladimir Putin, which, presumably, lives in the town of Voorschoten.
At this point it is beyond any one (or countless number of) human beings to distinguish truth
from lies from epic propaganda, so we won't even try. Here is the latest relevant news that
just crossed the stream from Ukraine's defense ministry. From Bloomberg:
REBELS DOWN 2 UKRAINIAN FIGHTER PLANES TODAY, IFX REPORTS
REBELS DOWN SU-25 FIGHTERS IN DONETSK REGION: DEFENSE MINISTRY
More from Reuters: Pro-Russian rebels have shot down two Ukrainian fighter jets, a spokesman
for Ukraine's military operations said on Wednesday. The spokesman said the two were downed
near Savur Mogila in eastern Ukraine. No details were known about the pilots.
Pro-Russian separatists shot down two Ukrainian fighter jets Wednesday over a town close
to where Malaysia Airlines 3786.KU -2.17% Flight 17 crashed last week, a Ukrainian defense ministry
spokesman said.
Two SU-25 planes were brought down near the town of Saur-Mogila, which sits close to the
Russian border and is 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Torez, where the civilian jet was brought
down last Thursday, the spokesman said.
The alleged shoot-down of the jets would mark the first time a plane has been brought down
over Ukraine since the crash.
The spokesman said the army dispatched a team to the scene to establish the exact circumstances
of the downing of the jets. Rebels didn't immediately comment
Somehow we have a feeling this is merely yet another attempt by Ukraine to keep the pressure
on the rebels now that the international response to MH17 has been muted by nearly 100% following
Europe's complete inability to agree on what if any sanctions should be imposed on Putin, and the
US state department presenting evidence of Russian involvement that can best be described as laughable.
SheepRevolution
Well it's quite obvious now the the US will do everything and anything in order to start
a full-scale war in Ukraine. I couldn't possibly imagine that it would have something to do
with 1) the coming stock-market crash and 2) Germany not willing to take side with the US and
put sanctions against Russia (which in turn puts even more pressure on the US Dollar)... Right?
The leader of the pro-Russian rebels accused of shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17
said his forces did not have any of the surface-to-air missiles as alleged by American and other
Western governments.
"I am telling you again, we have never been in possession of a single BUK (surface-to-air missile)
system," Alexander Borodai, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, told CNN's
Chris Cuomo in an exclusive interview on the channel's "New Day" programme yesterday.
"I can list all of the means of defence that we have. All of these means of defense are capable
of only crashing low-flying targets."
Borodai dismissed the widely held belief that rebel forces had shot down the Boeing 777-200 over
the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, killing all 298 people on board.
"I don't know what to say because the world community doesn't want to hear it. We had no reason
to take down this plane and Ukraine had this reason to destroy our government," he said.
Borodoi was also asked about a Twitter post, which Western intelligence had cited as proof that
rebel forces had the BUK, a Soviet-era surface-to-air missile system capable of long-range attack.
"It is very simple to disprove it. All the information that comes through the Internet, in my
opinion, is practically all lies."
He said his forces had nothing to gain in shooting down a civilian airliner, adding that for
"Ukraine our enemy, the crash of this plane is very beneficial," said Borodai.
Borodai, however, refused to answer Cuomo's question on the support his forces were getting from
Moscow, saying he would not comment on questions touching on Russia as he only represented the breakaway
government he headed.
The interview is the first direct comments from the top rebel chief since the shooting down of
flight MH17, which departed Amsterdam for Kuala Lumpur, on July 17.
Coinciding with Borodai's rejection of the allegations against his forces is a claim by Russia
that a Ukrainian fighter jet could have brought down the Boeing 777.
Andrei Kartapolov, the head of the General Staff's Main Operational Directorate, said that a
Ukrainian fighter jet, a Su-25, had tailed flight MH17 moments before it crashed.
He said the MAS airliner lost speed at 17.20 and disappeared from radar screens at 17.23. It
then veered off its course to the north over Donetsk, at one point as much as 14km.
"The reason for flying off the course – whether the crew made a navigational error or followed
Ukrainian air traffic control commands – can be learned only from flight recorders, known as 'black
boxes' and from recorded communications of the air traffic control," said Kartapolov.
Rebel forces yesterday handed over the black boxes, which could shed light on flight MH17's final
moments, to Malaysian officials, following a deal reached between the two parties. – July 22, 2014.
I feel like USA is taking this opportunity to bring down Russia. In this case, I
think should let the experts to do judgment.
Not simply pointing finger at anybody, especially when Netherlands (major victims' came from)
and Malaysia yet to issue any official statement saying who should responsible for this. I'm
Malaysian, but I think simply blaming Russia based on somebody said something isn't right thing
to do.
Saying 100 times that rebels downed the plane does not make this more credible than saying
it once. Most people believe that revels downed the plane. If there is nothing new to say then
repeating accusations can only make this look suspicions. All evidence in this tragedy is circumstantial
so far.
Ukraine is acting though as if it knows that there will be no more factual proof. Ukrainian
president declared that this was an act of terror before most even heard about the tragedy.
Did Ukraine know something or this was just "a shot in the air" ? I believe that rebels shot
the plane but circumstantial evidence points so far that this was a tragic mistake, which is
not the 1st of this kind. Impatience by Ukraine in capitalizing on the tragedy is exactly what
is suspicions. Would Ukraine have prevented the tragedy if it could? The more Ukraine "benefits"
from the tragedy the more I doubt so.
This turns me from unconditionally supporting Ukraine and sanctions against Russia to a more
cautious position. Let's wait for more facts in this tragedy. Ukraine's comparing this to 9/11
is a gross exaggeration demonstrating a clouded judgement at best. This is a real tragedy but
Ukraine implies an evil plot comparable to 9/11. 9/11 is an unprecedented terrorist attack;
comparing an accidental downing of a civilian plane by rebels to 9/11 makes 9/11 look "innocent",
which is an offensive proposition at best.
From comments: This, brilliantly said by Russell Stevens below, this is why we don't just blindly
believe what we are told by our "impartial, honest" media any more... "...It started for me in the Kosovo
war, NATO lied endlessly, almost the default position was to tell lies. Then we had WMDs, then we have
massacred by Gadaffi that never happened, fake chemical weapons attacks, its an endless series of LIES.
Look at Cameron, stood up in the House of Commons after the BBC changed the words "napalm" to "chemical
weapons" in a Panorama Special which I am convinced used actors, and he said "if we do not stop Assad
now he will continue using chemical weapons more frequently". He never did.
It is just endless lies for geopolitical money grabbing wars. It is WORSE than the Soviet Union
ever used to be. For God sake people take off the blinkers, we are the New Soviet Union...."
I think Obama lost here, including all momentum and clout against Putin, because of the continued
US support for the Israeli slaughter in Gaza. How in the world can anyone support sanctions
against Putin when the US is enabling war crimes in the Middle East, still not willing or working
to promote sanctions or punishment of Israel?
Without the Gaza tragedy, the focus would have been on the Ukraine. It seems hypocritical
to castigate Putin given the horror in Gaza and the refusal of the US to take a moral stand.
mjakes20, 22 July 2014 1:33pm
I hope any investigation proves unbiased and conclusive. In the meantime, I'm sick of seeing
both sides using selective evidence that feed into existing prejudices in order to advance a
political agenda. Once again, RIP to all on board.
Michael Bluth mjakes20, 22 July 2014 2:33pm
Actually only one side has produced any evidence at all. The US have quoted some social media
posts - or rather referred to them without quoting.
VladimirM, 22 July 2014 1:34pm
"EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels to consider more sanctions against Russia, with David
Cameron leading the charge for tougher measures."
I start thinking that sanctions have nothing to do with Ukraine. No matter what Russia does
or Putin says new sanctions keep arriving and arriving. I think that they are related to
the US-lead battle for gas exports, especially of LNG. The latest US' actions targeted Rosneft
and Novatek, for example, which is telling.
I have no idea why the EU is so determined. The US will win gas (or oil) money, but Europe
will undermine her energy security even more because Russia sells, but has no political influence
on the EU. The US will have both influence and resources to sell.
loveminuso VladimirM, 22 July 2014 1:42pm
Spot on...You have to be an especially cold, thuggish psychopath to use the deaths of
298 human beings as a tool to extort an entire nation, who until now have no proven evidence
against them of any wrong doing. This is what makes up the English and US Goverments…sick
thuggish common criminals..capable of any deceit for personal gain…we are in big trouble.
21st May 2014 is the date that is going to go down in history as the start of the new Cold War.
That's when Russia signed its big natural gas deal with China to the tune of 400bn dollars.
signalling that the world's economic axis was shifting to the East. The Eurasian Century is
upon us. After that the BRICs started plotting to set up their own alternative petro-currency
regime, essentially an alternative to the American dollar reserve. If that got off the ground
and OPEC for example started demanding payment or even part-payment in a basket of yen-yuan-Euro,
then the US economy would be devastated and it would be the end of all their military adventuring.
Now this is quite attractive to Europe, especially for the Germans who are just basically asking
themselves, especially after the NSA spying scandal, whether they would be better off tilting
to Moscow.
This is the big picture. Dangerous times ahead. If Iran slipped the net, and joined
up with the Sino-Russian axis, I think the US would lose it entirely.
Interesting to see the changes of the British public opinion in course of this tragedy.
Before the MH17 the most recommended posts were "pro-Russian", I'd evaluate the score as 3:1
for Russia.
Right after the accident the mass media started a massive propaganda attack, full or unchecked
"facts" (well, to be precise it happened after Obama's speech where he gave first directions
on who to blame).
And the score turned the opposite, say 1:5.
Now it quickly comes back.
16:35
Today in 14.50 Moscow time in Avdiivka happened reignition Coke plant, owned by the oligarch
Rinat Akhmetov. Fire brought fire from mortars and howitzers from captured by the national guard
under Orlovka, said "Russian news service" in the press centre of DND. Last night, the factory
was already on fire, but in the morning was extinguished.
16:29
Odessa "europadangos" mark Gordienko, which the judge of the Kyiv district court Yulia Fedoseeva
accused in the attack, was released. As informs a portal "Duma", the investigator decided that
to detain the activist and elect him the measure of restraint for no reason. Earlier it was
reported that Odessa "euromaidan" came to the building of the interior Ministry and promised
to burn it, if Gordienko will not let go.
16:17
Ukrainian troops continue to fire at the Lisichansk, despite the fact that the militia left
the city. This was reported by the unit commander of the army LNR Alexey Brain, quoted by the
Agency "new Russia". He noted that militia left the Lisichansk after the shelling of the city
by the security forces to save civilians.
So the spokesman for the OSCE mission said they received "no obstruction" that their passage
to the site was "incredibly fast".
Yesterday the Dutch experts said the efforts of the team
were "impressive" and they did "a hell of a job". The bodies were in an "acceptable" condition
and "treated better then we were lead to believe."
The bodies were handed over, the black boxes were handed over. Neither was "held hostage".
People should step back from the hysteria, you owe those people some respect
How is the war in East Ukraine progressing, I assume Ukraine and its allied Western military
advisers are using the cover of the MH17 tragedy to move more weaponry and forces into play
?
Sadly I doubt we (as in the US) have lost control of Poroshenko. I think he is probably being
closely guided by the CIA who are allegedly quite a presence in Kiev at the moment. We don't
concede second place to anyone when it comes to sociopathic self-interested slaughter
This, brilliantly said by Russell Stevens below, this is why we don't just blindly believe what
we are told by our "impartial, honest" media any more...
"...It started for me in the Kosovo
war, NATO lied endlessly, almost the default position was to tell lies. Then we had WMDs, then
we have massacred by Gadaffi that never happened, fake chemical weapons attacks, its an endless
series of LIES.
Look at Cameron, stood up in the House of Commons after the BBC changed the words "napalm"
to "chemical weapons" in a Panorama Special which I am convinced used actors, and he said "if
we do not stop Assad now he will continue using chemical weapons more frequently". He never
did.
It is just endless lies for geopolitical money grabbing wars. It is WORSE than the Soviet
Union ever used to be. For God sake people take off the blinkers, we are the New Soviet Union...."
Here's what a Republican US Congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul says about
US State Dept. propaganda:
"While western media outlets rush to repeat government propaganda
on the event, there are a few things they will not report," Paul, a former Republican congressman
from Texas, wrote on his website. "They will not report that the crisis in Ukraine started late
last year, when the EU and U.S. overthrew the elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych.
Without U.S.-sponsored 'regime change,' it is unlikely that hundreds would have been killed
in the unrest that followed. Nor would the Malaysian Airlines crash have happened…
"They will not report that the Ukrainian government has much to gain by pinning the attack
on Russia, and that the Ukrainian prime minister has already expressed his pleasure that Russia
is being blamed for the attack," Paul said. "They will not report that the missile that apparently
shot down the plane was from a sophisticated surface-to-air missile system that requires a good
deal of training that the separatists do not have." http://time.com/3012968/malaysia-arilines-ukraine-crash-ron-paul/
How blessed are the USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, where everybody is immigrant and nationalism
in its European form has no roots. This civil war unleashed by junta against South East is the now looks
similar to Yugoslav war. Air bombardments, tanks and arttellry are used against civilian targets. And
as Napoleon noted, God is always on the side with better artillery :-(.
1. Donetsk, Lugansk and surrounding towns and villages being bombarded ceaselessly by Uke forces
using every weapon in their possession, Grad, Hurricane, Tornado and Smerch MLRS and arty up to
20.3 cm.
2. In last 4 days over 300 civilians in the aforementioned areas have been killed and
a like number and more wounded. Civilian and industrial areas completely devoid of any Army of Novorossiya
facilities and troops are targeted as is infrastructure such as gas, water and electric services.
3. Shoot down of MH17 has focused all world eyes on the aircraft. The Ukes are using this to
unleash an assault on the civilians of Novorossiya with unprecedented savagery. Entire MLRS volleys
are being fired in to cities, towns and villages away from the prying eyes of the press.
4. The Cauldron has not been reduced. Although the remaining two battalions of airborne and armor
troops have been decimated and have lost most of their equipment and transport both are still dangerous.
5. The Ukes are pressing Army of Novorossiya very strong. There has been a noticeable change
of tactics in some areas of fighting by the Ukes, obviously a change of command or advisors.
6. Heavy fighting around both Lugansk and Donetsk Aerodromes. Neither side seems to have an advantage.
7. Situation in and around Slavyansk and Kramatorsk is grave. Little food and water, some electric
in certain areas. Many roads blocked by Uke block posts. Military age men and some women are still
being arrested.
8. The fate of the Militsiya detachments from Slavyansk and Kramatorsk arrested after Strelkov
withdrew are still unknown. No information or contact to any of their families since 05 July afternoon.
9. Travel by private vehicle in areas of Novorossiya from the Kherson Oblast/Novorossiya border
is dangerous. In the countryside at some small road intersections there are one, two or three civilian
cars and trucks with the occupants shot dead.
10. At one intersection of two country dirt roads two cars are shot. Lying beside one of the
cars are three local villagers, one man and two women, obviously shot to death while trying to either
help the wounded occupants of a car or trying to remove the bodies. Locals are terrified and rarely
leave their villages. Crops are untended.
11. One small natsgardia/right sector unit of 8 was ambushed in Kherson/Novorossiya Border area
by unknown assailants and their bodies left neatly arranged along the forest path, weapons and equipment
removed by unknown personnel. Near the ambush sight a young woman was found dead. She had been outraged
and murdered.
12. Civilian travel in east and southern areas of Kherson Oblast can be dangerous. In the areas
north of the Krimea/Kherson Oblast border numerous patrols of natsgarda/right sector.
13. Vehicles and the few trains coming to Krimea from Kherson Oblast are searched for valuables
and most of the military age men detained and taken 'to the office'. They either pay a large bribe
to be allowed to continue to Krimea or are press ganged in to Uke service and sent to the fronts.
14. The refugee situation in Krimea is difficult. No one is left without succor that need it.
As in reports from Cassad and Strelkov there are many entire families of refugees fleeing to Krimea,
arriving in cars and vans packed with personal belongings, food and drink, vehicles often with the
tell tale 'special' license number arrangements. Russia tells all they will be moved to other oblasti
in Russia. Many of this category of refugees demand to be housed 'near the beaches', demand refugee
status and demand services.
15. 35000 refugees are in Krimea alone, over 300000 refugees have fled to Rostov Oblast and many
moved to other oblasti. It is estimated that a like number of refugees are staying with family and
friends in Russian Federation. Another 50000 have fled west to Ukeland.
16. In the area around the MH17 crash scene the Ukes are using the local truce for the crash
investigation to move and gather units for an assault designed to split Donetsk from Lugansk. OSCE
and foreign press on sight fail to see armored columns gathering in the general area.
17. Novorossiya is being hard pressed. The Ukes are using their overwhelming numbers of armor,
arty and MLRS to 'mob' the Army of Novorossiya. Opinion is the situation is in balance and could
tip either way, victory for Novorossiya or total defeat.
Ukraine accuses pro-Russian separatists of planning to hand over the flight recorders to Moscow
as they turn up in Donetsk.
Ukraine's security service has released a recording it says features pro-Russian separatists
talking about trying to hide the black boxes from flight MH17 at the request of Moscow.
The claim was made as footage emerged of at least one of the flight data recorders - which are in
fact orange - being picked up by a rescue worker on Friday.
In the audio clip which contains three separate conversations, a fighter who is identified as "O.Khodakovskyi"
tells a second person named as "Andriy": "I have a request for you. It is not my request.
"Our friends from high above are very much interested in the fate of the black boxes.
"I mean people from Moscow.
"Please, co-operate with the Ministry of Emergency. All that you find must not come into somebody
else's hands.
"Try to take everything that you find so that it doesn't get into somebody else's hands. All those
people that are coming, OSCE and so on."
Special report 4.30pm and 8.30pm
The conversations are alleged to have taken place on Friday, the day after the Malaysia Airlines
jet was shot down over eastern Ukraine.
Sky News is not able to verify whether the 30 second clip is genuine or who is speaking in it.
But Kiev claims it is proof of the "efforts of the Russian side to hide the evidence of its involvement
in (a) terrorist act".
The pro-Russian separatists and Moscow have both denied having any part in the disaster, which killed
298 people.
But Ukraine has made repeated claims that pro-Russian rebels with Russian equipment blew the jet
out of the sky before Moscow helped them cover it up by allowing the missile launcher blamed for
the attack back across the border.
It has also been claimed that rebels tampered with evidence and bodies at the crash site.
Wreckage of downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine
Pro-Russian separatists and Moscow deny having a part in the disaster
The separatists have now acknowledged that they have what are presumed to be the flight recorders
from the Boeing 777-200 in the eastern city of Donetsk.
"Some items, presumably the black boxes, were found, and they have been delivered to Donetsk and
they are under our control," Aleksander Borodai, prime minister of the self-styled Donetsk People's
Republic, told a news conference.
"There are no specialists among us who could pinpoint the look of the black boxes, but we brought
to Donetsk some technical items which could be the black boxes of the airliner."
He said they would be handed over to the International Civil Aviation Organisation and also repeated
that the rebels do not have the capability to shoot down a plane flying at 33,000ft.
Video:
Black Box Removed From Crash SiteA flight recorder being taken away from a plane crash site
A flight recorder being taken away from a plane crash site
Footage has emerged of what is believed to be one of the aircraft's two flight recorders being carried
away from the crash site.
Enlarge
TaineNZ, Jul 30, 2014
Wasn't this rubbish proven to be fake? Why would the Ukrainian Security service release
bogus evidence? hmmm?
Nuxgael, Jul 25, 2014
And this from the same government that kills hundreds of innocent Eastern Ukrainians each
month as well as targeting ambulances in Eastern Ukraine. They have also been accused of having
a shoot to kill policy on pro Russian Ukrainians. Then the followers of those in government
were attacking Jews and non-Ukrainians living in Ukraine. For me I wait until all the evidence
is in because too many sides are using this dreadful incident for their own reasons now.
Pete Like, Jul 22, 2014
This war has been allowed to escalate with a virtual News Black Out. Over 1000 have been
killed - we are now told. The victims of the air crash are the collateral damage of the
Geo-Political machinations born in Maidan. Their blood is on the hands of all the politicians
who created this situation and allowed it to get out of hand. Now they stand blaming each other
like spoiled children
Patricia Marchand, Jul 21, 2014
It is the second time a Malaysian plane is brought down in 'mysterious' circumstances. Lots
of noise that might 'diffuse' what really happened, why this plane? Any warning given to any
organization? Why flying over a danger zone when the satellite could have given warnings? Black
boxes one cannot analyze in both cases? Are we going to have to wait 10... 20... years before
somebody tells us the true?
MikeA, Jul 21, 2014
LOL The authorities in Ukraine appear to understand very little about the value of the Black
Box information. There is no benefit to "hiding" them as they would not reveal anything of use
since they only store the actual information from the flight and cockpit recordings. We already
think the aircraft was hit by a missile and the flight boxes will, at the very most, have recorded
an explosion with a total loss; I would have thought that what is needed is the aircraft body
as that would be the best evidence of an external explosion and also parts of the missile as
there will be identification numbers that will possibly enable traceability.
The 10-day NATO exercise code named "BREEZE 2014" has ended in Black Sea. The exercise, which
included the use of electronic warfare and electronic intelligence aircraft such as the Boeing EA-18G
Growler and the Boeing E3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), coincided with the
shootdown of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine, some 40 miles from the Russian border.
NATO ships and aircraft had the Donetsk and Luhansk regions under total radar and electronic surveillance.
MH-17 was shot down over a region where Russian-speaking separatist forces have been battling against
the alliance of the Ukrainian armed forces and a private mercenary force answerable to a Ukrainian-Jewish
billionaire oligarch.
The U.S. Army has revealed that the 10-day exercise involved "commercial traffic monitoring". Because
of the sophistication of the electronic warfare and intelligence used during SEA BREEZE, it can
be assumed that commercial traffic monitoring included monitoring the track of MH-17.
Past NATO-Ukraine exercises in Crimea were called "SEA BREEZE". This year's annual SEA BREEZE exercise
with Ukraine, approved by the rump Ukrainian Parliament, is clouded in mystery with the Pentagon
saying it was only "in the planning stage and we can't announce dates yet". However, 200 U.S. Army
personnel normally assigned to bases in Germany were in Ukraine during the time of the MH-17 fly-over.
They were participating in NATO exercise RAPID TRIDENT II. Ukraine's Ministry of Defense led the
exercise.
BREEZE included the AEGIS-class guided missile cruiser USS Vela Gulf. AEGIS cruisers' AN/SPY 1 radar
has the ability to track all aircraft over a large region. For example, the AEGIS test center in
Moorestown, New Jersey, was able to see the Boeing 747 TWA Flight 800 when it disappeared from radar
screens in 1996 near East Moriches Bay, Long Island. According to Lockheed Martin personnel who
operated the AEGIS test center in New Jersey, the Navy ordered the SPY 1 radar turned off for "maintenance"
shortly before the downing of TWA 800.
From the Black Sea, the Vela Gulf was able to track Malaysian Airlines 17 over the Black Sea and
any missiles fired at the plane. U.S. AWACS electronic intelligence (ELINT) aircraft were also flying
over the Black Sea region at the time of the MH-17 flyover of Ukraine. Growler aircraft have the
capability to jam radar systems in all surface-to-air threats.
The announcement of U.S. BREEZE and RAPID TRIDENT II military maneuvers came on May 21, 2014, and
were announced on the website operated by Vice President Joe Biden's office. Biden's son, Hunter
Biden, is a newly-named director of the Ukrainian natural gas and oil company Burisma Holdings,
Ltd., owned by IhorKolomoisky, the Ukrainian-Israeli mafia oligarch, whose is known as the "Chameleon".
Kolomoiskyhas raised his own mercenary army, complete with the BUK missiles allegedly used in the
shootdown of MH-17. Kolomoisky, the Governor of Dnipropetrovsk oblast in eastern Ukraine, has threatened
terrorist attacks against Russian-speaking officials in eastern Ukraine, including assassinations.
Burisma is a typical RUIM [Russian - Ukrainian - Israeli - Mafia] operation, with subsidiaries in
such tax havens as Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands. It is part of Kolomoisky's large umbrella
corporation called Privat Group.
Kolomoisky, estimated to be the second-richest person in Ukraine, also has strong connections inside
Kiev's Borispol International Airport, where it has been reported that Ukrainian Interior Ministry
troops stormed the air traffic control tower shortly before MH-17 was shot down. A Spanish air traffic
controller, who possessed knowledge of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's involvement in the shootdown
of MH-17, reportedly had his life threatened by people he described as "Maidan" troops, a reference
to the Maidan Square uprising that toppled the Ukrainian government earlier this year. The Spanish
controller, identified only as "Carlos," understood that the shootdown of MH-17 was carried out
by supporters of former Ukrainian Prime Minister YuliaTymoshenko and Interior Minister ArsenAvakov.
Kolomoisky is a political ally of Tymoshenko and Avakov.
Kolomoisky, until 2012, owned Aerosvit Airlines, which used Borispol as a hub, and Donbassaero,
which was based out of Donetsk Airport. Aerosvit leased all of its planes, including a Boeing 767,
from Boeing Capital. After filing for bankruptcy, Aerosvit and Donbassaero ceased flying in April
2013. Among other Kolomoisky airlines, Skyways Express, based out of Stockholm ArlandAirport; City
Express, based at Gothenburg, Sweden Airport; and Cimber Sterling, based out of Sønderborg and Copenhagen
Kastrup Airports in Denmark, all filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Kolomoisky continues to be active
in commercial aviation. His Private Group owns Dniproavia, which is based at Dnipropetrovsk Airport.Kolomoisky's
aviation and Israeli security contacts gives him carte blanche access to secure airport facilities
in Europe and around the world.
The Obama administration is intensifying its propaganda campaign against Russia and pro-Russian
separatists over the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17. Even as it is clear that the
US does not know how MH17 crashed or what role Russia played in the tragedy, top administration
officials are using the crisis to issue repeated ultimatums against the Russian government.
US Secretary of State John Kerry made multiple television appearances Sunday, issuing bellicose
statements and threats. The shooting down of the airline was a "moment of truth" for Russian President
Vladimir Putin, he told Fox News.
Kerry provided the US "case" that Russia gave the east Ukrainian forces weapons that could have
been used to shoot down MH17.
"There was a convoy several weeks ago, about 150 vehicles with armored personnel carriers,
multiple rocket launchers, tanks, artillery, all of which crossed over from Russia into the
eastern part of Ukraine and was turned over to the separatists," Kerry told CNN. "So there's
an enormous amount of evidence, even more evidence than I just documented, that points to the
involvement of Russia in providing these systems, training the people on them."
Even if Kerry's claims were true and Russia had provided weapons capable of shooting down MH17,
this would not prove that the east Ukrainian forces in fact shot down the plane. Citing Mark Galeotti
of New York University's Center for Global Affairs, CNN said that the "evidence is largely circumstantial.
NATO's images did not show the tanks actually crossing into Ukraine."
Asked on CNN whether Russia was "culpable" in the MH17 crash, Kerry refused to answer. "You know,
culpability is a judicial term, and people can make their own judgments about what they read here.
That's why we've asked for a full-fledged investigation," he said.
The recklessness of Kerry's statements is staggering. The United States' top diplomat
is insinuating that Russia might have helped shoot down MH17, while issuing threats that could lead
to international sanctions against Russia and an escalation of the civil war in Ukraine into a global
war. As he advances these charges, however, he admits that the administration does not actually
know what happened.
In reality, for the Obama administration, matters of fact-what actually happened and who
shot down MH17, provided it was shot down-are beside the point. The event was seized on to press
longstanding political aims. Washington continued to exploit the issue yesterday to pressure Russia
and the United States' imperialist allies in Europe to fall in line with US foreign policy.
Speaking on CNN, US Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (Democrat of California)
demanded that Putin "man up" and confess to shooting down MH17. She said, "I think the nexus between
Russia and the separatists have been established very clearly. So the issue is, where is Putin?
I would say, 'Putin, you have to man up. You should talk to the world. You should say if this was
a mistake, which I hope it was, say it.'"
Feinstein also called on the European Union to impose deep economic sanctions against Russia:
"I think Europe has to come together. I think Germany, in particular, has to lead. I think we have
to continue with sanctions. It's difficult, because you need Russian help in so many things."
For their part, Britain, Germany and France announced on Sunday that they would prepare to increase
sanctions against Russia over the plane crash at a European foreign ministers meeting Tuesday.
British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond on Sunday said Russia "risks becoming a pariah state
if it does not behave properly."
Alluding to divisions within Europe over policy toward Russia-particularly, reluctance from sections
of the German political establishment to follow in lockstep behind the US-Hammond said, "Some of
our European allies have been less enthusiastic, and I hope that the shock of this incident will
see them now more engaged, more willing to take the actions which are necessary to bring home to
the Russians that when you do this kind of thing it has consequences."
While it presses its propaganda campaign against Russia, the US appears to be hedging its bets
about what actually happened. In comments Friday in which he denounced Russia, Obama himself made
a peculiar reference to a lot of "misinformation" on the MH17 crash, saying that it was necessary
for people to "sift through what is factually based and what is simply speculation."
US claims that Russia is politically responsible for the crash of MH17 are a cynical fraud.
Whether the plane was brought down by a missile fired by Ukrainian or Russian-backed forces,
the central responsibility for this tragedy lies with Washington, Berlin and their European allies.
The civil war raging in east Ukraine, in which one or another side shot down the jetliner, was provoked
by their support for the installation of a far-right, pro-Western Ukrainian regime through the fascist-led
putsch of February 22 in Kiev.
Since then, CIA officials, mercenaries from the firm previously known as Blackwater, and European
intelligence operatives have worked closely with Ukrainian fascist militias, such as Right Sector
or the Azov Battalion, to attack and terrorize east Ukrainian cities. It is unclear how much the
White House, which has already claimed that the CIA spied on German officials and intelligence agencies
without telling Obama, knows about these activities.
Under these conditions, it is impossible to place confidence in any statement coming from the
Obama administration about the MH17 crash. While pro-Russian forces might have shot it down, it
is also possible that Ukrainian army forces or fascist militias, working with Western intelligence
units or mercenary groups, shot down the plane and blamed it on pro-Russian forces.
Significantly, what reports have emerged about missile batteries active in the region at the
time of the MH17 crash point to involvement not by Russia, but by the US-backed regime in Kiev.
US intelligence has claimed that US spy satellites over Ukraine detected an SA-11 Buk missile
battery firing a missile shortly before MH17 crashed. Both Russian and Ukrainian army units field
Buk missile batteries, which were originally designed in the Soviet Union. The Kiev regime subsequently
released a video clip of a Buk missile battery, which it said was being rushed towards the Russian
border after the attack, ostensibly in order to escape detection after shooting down MH17.
According to Russian television coverage reported by NBC News, however, the serial number on
the missile launcher in question-312-showed that it is in fact operated by the Ukrainian army.
Finally! The Russian military has decided to speak out about some of what it knows about what happened
to MH17. It was a typical Russian event: the interpreters were nothing short of *terrible* (I speak
as a former military interpreter myself), the visual aids were badly designed (the shape of a SU-24
bomber was used to represent a totally different SU-25 close air support aircraft), and there was
no Q&A. See for yourself:
Still, a few very interesting things came out of this press conference.
First, the Ukies have been caught lying about their military aircraft in the area of
the disaster. They had claimed that no UAF aircraft were in the area. The Russians have
shown the recorded radar tracks which reveal the following: there was what appears to have been
a military aircraft (with no transponder) flying below 5000m which suddenly began climbing just
before MH17 was hit by some kind of missile. This unidentified aircraft then stayed and
observed as MH17 fell to the ground. The Russians added that a SU-25 armed with a R-60
air to air missile could have shot down MH17. Maybe. But what is certain is that the civilian
radars did detected this strange Ukie aircraft.
Now, these radar tracks are from *civilian*
radars. The Russians apparently are not willing to share the data from their military radars.
This is why this mysterious Ukie aircraft 'appears' at 5'000m altitude and then 'disappears'
again, but you can be certain that their military radars, especially on their A-50 AWACs did
track that aircraft before and after its strange maneuver. Again, I think that the Russians
hope that the experts will come to the correct conclusions on the basis of what they have shown
today and that they will not have to reveal more. But we can be certain that they have the full
picture and that they know exactly what happened.
Second, the Russians are challenging their American colleagues to show the images they
claim show the launch of the BukM1 rocket. They also point out at the interesting coincidence
that an US experimental launch detection satellite was exactly over the area at the moment of
the tragedy. Clearly, they are tossing the world experts some kind of lead here, but I am not
sure what this is.
Third, the Russians have shown their own space-based imagery which shows that one battery
of BukM1 had been moved just prior to the incident (See for yourself
here). It will be interesting
to see if the Ukies explain what is shown on these picture and, if yes, how?
As a public information this conference gets a C+ but as a lead for experts I would give it a
much higher A-. We know have hard proof that the Ukies lied at least twice. They lied about
the footage of the Buk missiles being moved back to Russia (the footage was taken in Ukie-occupied
territory) and they most definitely lied when they denied having any military aircraft in the area
when in reality they had one in the immediate proximity of MH17. That is a huge lie which
the Ukies will have a very hard time dismissing.
As I said in my first post about MH17, I have no hope whatsoever that the western plutocracy
will ever admit that the junta did it. Ditto for the corporate presstitues of the MSM, but
I do hope that the world will see this tragedy for what is clearly was: a deliberate false flag
on the part of the Nazi junta in Kiev. As David Chandler correctly points out about 9/11, the proof
of a cover up is in itself already a proof of a conspiracy.
Ukraine hasn't said how it immediately knew rebels downed Malaysian plane, notes the Russian
Foreign Ministry, as it unveils 10 awkward questions for Ukraine (and perhaps the US 'snap judgment')
to answer about the MH17 disaster. However, what is perhaps more concerning for the hordes of finger-pointers
is that:
RUSSIA HAS IMAGES OF UKRAINE DEPLOYING BUK ROCKETS IN EAST: IFX
RUSSIA: UKRAINE MOVED BUK NEAR REBELS IN DONETSK JULY 17: IFX
RUSSIA DETECTED UKRAINIAN FIGHTER JET PICK UP SPEED TOWARD MH17
Obviously, if there is proof that this is so, aside from CIA-created YouTube clips, these would
deal another unpleasant blow to US foreign policy.
The Russian defense ministry during its press conference which concluded minutes ago:
Here is the full clip of the Russian ministry releasing its own forensic analysis of what happened
to flight MH17 (with English translation).
Russia wants to know why Ukraine moved its BUK missiles systems the day of the MH17 crash:
RUSSIAN GENERAL STAFF HAS SPACE IMAGES OF SECTORS OF UKRAINIAN FORCES' POSITIONS IN
SOUTHEASTERN UKRAINE, INCLUDING BUK MISSILE LUNCH SITES 8 KILOMETERS FROM LUHANSK - RUSSIAN DEFENSE
MINISTRY - interfax
The day the Malaysian airliner crashed, the Ukrainian forces deployed an air defense group
of three or four Buk-M1 missile batteries near Donetsk, Lt. Gen. Andrei Kartapolov, head of
the Russian General Staff's Main Operations Department, told reporters on Monday.
"These surface-to-air systems are capable of hitting targets at a distance of up
to 35 kilometers at an altitude of 22 kilometers. For what purpose and against whom were these
missile systems deployed? As is known, the militia has no aviation," he said.
Russia has the flight paths of the Ukrainian fighters and MH17. Furthermore, it is asking the
same question we asked last Thurday:
RUSSIA SAYS MH17 DIVERGED 14 KM FROM FLIGHT PATH NEAR DONETSK
And wants to know why. The image (as seen in the presentation above) allegedly shows Ukraine
fighter jets near MH17:
Here is a screengrab of a Su-25 fighter jet detected close to MH17 before crash.
"A Ukraine Air Force military jet was detected gaining height, it's distance from
the Malaysian Boeing was 3 to 5km," said the head of the Main Operations Directorate
of the HQ of Russia's military forces, Lieutenant-General Andrey Kartopolov speaking at a media
conference in Moscow on Monday.
"[We] would like to get an explanation as to why the military jet was flying along
a civil aviation corridor at almost the same time and at the same level as a passenger plane,"
he stated.
"The SU-25 fighter jet can gain an altitude of 10km, according to its specification," he
added. "It's equipped with air-to-air R-60 missiles that can hit a target at a distance up to
12km, up to 5km for sure."
The presence of the Ukrainian military jet can be confirmed by video shots made by
the Rostov monitoring center, Kartopolov stated.
And asks for US proof of their accusations:
RUSSIA SAYS U.S. SATELLITE FLEW OVER MH17 AT TIME IT WAS DOWNED... which
would provide all the proof needed to show who is responsible - so why hasn't the US explained
this or shown it?
RUSSIA ASKS U.S. FOR EVIDENCE ROCKET FIRED FROM REBEL-HELD AREA
RUSSIA: NO U.S. PROOF THAT MISSILE FIRED FROM REBEL-HELD AREA
DEFENCE MINISTRY SAYS RUSSIA DID NOT DELIVER ANY SA-11 BUK MISSILE SYSTEMS TO SEPARATISTS
IN EASTERN UKRAINE "OR ANY OTHER WEAPONS"
And went on to rebuke all the Twitter photos created by Maidan to 'prove' the BUKs were moving
in Russian hands.
Additionally, as Russia noted using what appears to be legitimate photographic evidence (something
the west has so far failed to provide in any capacity) MH17 crashed within the operating zone of
the Ukrainian army's self-propelled, medium-range surface-to-air 'Buk' missile systems, the Russian
general said.
"We have space images of certain places where the Ukraine's air defense was located in the
southeast of the country," Kartapolov noted.
The first three shots that were shown by the general are dated July 14. The images show Buk missile
launch systems in about 8km northwest of the city of Lugansk – a TELAR and two TELs, according to
the military official.
Another image shows a radar station near Donetsk.
Radar stations of the air defense in Donetsk Region, 5km north of Donetsk city, on July 14,
2014.Photo courtesy of the Russian Defense MinistryRadar stations of the air defense in Donetsk
Region, 5km north of Donetsk city, on July 14, 2014.Photo courtesy of the Russian Defense Ministry
While the third picture shows the location of the air defense systems near Donetsk, he explained.
In particular, one can clearly see a TELAR launcher and about 60 military and auxiliary vehicles,
tents for vehicles and other structures, he elaborated.
Buk missile defense units in Donetsk Region, 5km north of Donetsk city, on July 14, 2014.Photo
courtesy of the Russian Defense MinistryBuk missile defense units in Donetsk Region, 5km north of
Donetsk city, on July 14, 2014.Photo courtesy of the Russian Defense Ministry
"Images from this area were also made on July 17. One should notice that the missile launcher
is absent [from the scene]. Image number five shows the Buk missile system in the morning of the
same day in the area of settlement Zaroschinskoe – 50km south of Donetsk and 8km south of Shakhtyorsk,"
the Kartapolov said.
No Buk missile defense units in Donetsk Region, 5km north of Donetsk city, on July 17, 2014.Photo
courtesy of the Russian Defense MinistryNo Buk missile defense units in Donetsk Region, 5km north
of Donetsk city, on July 17, 2014.Photo courtesy of the Russian Defense Ministry
Buk missile defense units in Zaroschinskoe, 50km south of Donetsk city and 8km south of Shakhtyorsk,
on July 17, 2014.Photo courtesy of the Russian Defense MinistryBuk missile defense units in Zaroschinskoe,
50km south of Donetsk city and 8km south of Shakhtyorsk, on July 17, 2014.Photo courtesy of the
Russian Defense Ministry
The question that has to be answered is why the missile system appeared in the area controlled
by the local militia forces shortly before the catastrophe, he stated.
The global public expects a speedy and independent investigation into the causes of the disaster
Malaysian aircraft in the airspace of Ukraine.
In order to conduct an objective investigation of possible leadership of the Ministry of Defense
of the Russian Federation has ased ten questions to the Ukrainian side.
1. Ukrainian authorities immediately identified the militia as the perpetrators of
the tragedy. What is the basis of such findings?
2. Could official Kiev to report all the details of using [BUKs] in a war zone? Most
importantly - why these systems are deployed there, as the militia no planes?
3. What are the causes of inactivity of Ukrainian authorities on the formation of an international
commission? When such a committee will work?
4. Are the armed forces of Ukraine international experts to present papers on accounting
for missiles, air-to-air and ground-to-air ammo and anti-aircraft missiles?
5. Whether these funds objective control on the movement of the Ukrainian Air Force aircraft
on the day of the tragedy brought international commission?
6. Why Ukrainian air traffic controllers allowed deviation of the route of the aircraft
to the north side of the "anti-terrorist operation zone"?
7. Why was not completely closed to civilian aircraft airspace over the combat zone, especially
because in this area there was no solid field of radar navigation?
8. Could official Kiev to comment on reports in the net, ostensibly on behalf of
the Spanish air traffic controllers working in Ukraine, which shot down over the territory of
Ukraine "Boeing" was accompanied by two Ukrainian military aircraft?
9. Why Security Service of Ukraine has begun without international representatives work with
recordings of talks with Ukrainian crew dispatchers "Boeing" and Ukrainian radar data?
10. How were the lessons from previous similar disasters Russian Tu-154 in 2001 in
the Black Sea? Then the leaders of Ukraine until the last minute denied any involvement of the
Armed Forces of the country to the tragedy until irrefutable evidence showed no guilt official
Kiev.
Unfortunately, there has been no response by the Ukraine side to these questions so far. We expect
that there will be some answers.
* * *
Needless to say, this places Ukraine and The US (as main protagonist of "finger pointer") in
an awkward position as finally someone, somewhere will have to present some actual facts instead
of merely continuing the "emotional appeals" propaganda.
We expect many of these questions to be answered once the contents of flight MH17's black box
are revealed and/or when Ukraine finally releases an undoctored version of the Air Traffic control
recording with the doomed flight.
This vicious, well coordinated propaganda campaign by Western MSM suggest existence of a comprehensive
plan and, possible, points that MH17 tragedy was preplanned provocation.
First the separatists are demonized because the "bodies are bloating in the sun", then for
putting them in a refrigerated train. I've seen newscasts bemoaning the fact that parts of the
aircraft are still lying around, and others bemoaning parts being shifted. This is a great example
how, once the victim is demonized, literally anything they do will be used to provoke what the
BBC newsreader this morning called "international fury". The BBC itself is provoking the international
fury, not sure how many people are buying it. I suppose this is all a chess game, they think
they've got Putin cornered.
Then he should ask his allies in Kiev to stop bombing those in the east, surely? Basic propaganda
101 from the US.
Putin wants to give them access, get your pals in Kiev to start the bombing again to make
access impossible (or at the very least unsafe) then 'demand' Putin allows access. Its the never
ending cycle, why can't people see through this ..
First of all once more, my sincere condolences to those who have lost loved ones, I know
that I cannot even begin to comprehend your feelings, my thoughts are with you!
There is something that is just not hanging true about this entire episode, the world is
stunned, the Ukranians are pointing the finger, they have concrete proof, they have pictures
of the missile trajectory rhetoric rhetoric, etc etc, but, we have seen nothing?
Russia has been completely taken aback, Vlad Putin did make a statement immediately afterwards
but it failed to be reported, as much as, the scathing Ukranian reports, Mr Kerry's comments
and Mr Cameron trying without much luck to speak to V Putin. Although the Dutch PM and others
did speak. Maybe the puppet was just too much, he knew what would be said anyway, predictable
as..........!
All the time we were told Russia, Russia, but when you see what the local miners have done,
how locals are bringing passports etc to reporters it is obvious that there is no coordination,
just complete shock and obvious humanity, then, you hear how Ukraine is awaiting the bodies,
the good guys.....after the bad guys have found refrigerated trains and done the difficult work......the
supposed bad guys could "possibly" have had the missiles, which possibly shot the airliner down
from 35,000 feet. The Ukranians however do have many such missiles and launchers and they are
in the area, apparently, but the bad guys have nothing to shoot down? We have to be absolutely
sure here just what went on?
The answer to all this, without any proof at all, is to place more and more embargoes
and restrictions on Russia,, I cannot believe the prejudiced rhetoric aimed at Russia without
proof of their intentional implied involvement, which let's face it would be ridiculous.......!
You know, if these Ukranians, were the good guys, they would be facilitating the movement
of the bodies and the trains, by having a truce, a cease fire but no, the very very vocal pointing
finger "good guys" are sending tanks in!
The question which must be answered, which always leads to the truth, is this. " Who Gain's?"
Wonderful, wonderful comment. That comment contains more truth and fact towards the real
truth than pretty much all of the media US/UK/Australian media circus and heads of state are
presenting us with.
The Russian evidence put forward is compelling, the American evidence is non existent.
Russia have proven that Ukrainian BUK systems were in the area at the time and American evidence
of Rebel BUK systems is non existent.
What the hell was the Ukrainian jet ,flying less than 5 kilometres from the stricken airliner,at
the same height and at the exact time, doing?
Why were Ukrainian BUK systems even in the region when the rebels don't have aircraft??
This is looking bad for Ukrainian officials,the Guardian has dug a hole so deep they will
never crawl out again and Obama is the emperor with no clothes.
Am I the only one that really really hates these annoying 'Kiev did it' posts. This crash
is a tragedy for all.
But to try to spin it into something it is not because the facts don't fit your view, well
thats just disgusting.
The facts tell us that by far the most likely explanation is that the pro-russian seperatists,
who have been (succesfully) shooting at Ukrainian military aircraft for some time, in a moment
of utter idiocy and incompetence shot down a civilian airliner who happened to be flying over.
There is no other explanation. The rebels don't have aircraft so why would the Ukrainians
shoot down an aircraft.
No military or political hierarchy would approve of some kind of 'lets frame the rebels strategy',
nobody would butcher 300 people. The risks of someone clapping out of school are just too high.
In time (maybe years) the rebels involved will come out. When that happens I hope a lot of
Russian trolls here go silent in shame I hope.
This has been the course of action within minutes of this tragedy unfolding. There is something
intrinsically wrong in the direction of and who it is coming from and where it is trying to
steer peoples minds.
I am not having it until the facts are out and that may take some considerable time.
This has just become a warmongering politicised mess trying to grab the hearts and minds
of people against an "evil" state.
We know who the evil state is and see and hear its whirring political cogs spinning round.
What has this got to do with Barak Obama and America, these comments from him have only to
do with progressing American hegemony and its come from the deep seated belief of its own over
inflated sense of self worth.
Barak Obama is just another warmongering US war criminal president who kills innocent civilians
abroad in order to progress its plans of world domination. Those killed in the process are known
as collateral damage.
You are probably typing this on your i-pad, sipping from your Starbucks latte machiatto.
Products of a culture of democracy, accountability and freedom.
I'll have warmongering US warcriminal presidents every day above people that have no accountability
like Putin and his corrupt ex-Soviet cronies.
the dignity of the victims must be stressed of course... of any victims from rich western
countries that is.
the thousands of victims of the last few weeks among the civilian population of east.ukr
and the 100k+ refuges fleeing the region are instead a fair prize to pay for the pacification
of the region for western investors and understandably these victims get almost no mention in
the press of elizabeth-arden capitals...
I dunno about Dronobama but Willie Wanka says the World has never been united as today. This
puppet and another PM the Gestapo know very well how to cry and make a drama.
A change in what's being said if not in tone - Obama and Cameron now calling for the same
as what Putin was from the beginning - a transparent and fair investigation.
But then going on to to criticize the poor people on the ground who, in the middle of an
on going war, have spent the last four days moving bodies into cold storage (despicable doesn't
cover it), and nothing on Kiev forces shelling Donetsk train station and the watch tower at
Donetsk airport just as things were getting moving - another Nobel laureate intent on leading
the world to war.
Harriet Salem, journalist in Donetsk
tweets: At #MH17 crash site Dutch forensic expert "impressed" with recovery operation &
workers given the size, weather & circumstances #Ukraine
Maybe if Obama had read Harriet's tweet he'd have been a bit less cavalier in insulting the
heroes involved in the recovery operation.
The more I think about what he said the more it's making my piss boil - imaging some world
leader saying 9/11 first responders had corrupted evidence and treated the victims disrespectfully
- their capital would have been obliterated within days.
Fucking sick of leaders - I used to think they were mostly fools, now I think they are
mostly psychopathic - time to get rid of the lot of them before they blow us all to hell.
Obama is going to have to produce those satellite images from the monitoring US satellite,
as well as the missile monitoring satellite. The Russians say they US has. The Russians have
produced theirs.
This is starting to look like most of us have suspected from the beginning ,(yet again).
They should let those investigators in, but make it clear that as long as Kiev does not keep
its army away, separatists will react accordingly. I.e. that they can't ensure the safety of
the investigators.
Kiev seems to be the main obstacle to an investigation. Obama is either not in the know
or simply lying, again.
Obama - in possession of the best intel in the world - apparently does not know there already
are inspectors at the site, even though the fact has been on regular news feeds for the past
five hours?
He also doesn't know the Ukraine army is shelling Donetsk station and preventing the train
full of bodies being removed as planned?
So shaming to see the POTUS go out there and deliver a rambling, shambling excuse for a speech
full of nothing but innuendo and lies.
And where the hell is the "proof" the US claimed to have on Friday? Come on, people don't
let this turn into another Syria debacle. Our international standing just will not survive a
repeat of that
You think that is bad, the Australian PM and FM are taking the matter to the UN security
council to pass a resolution to demand full unimpeded access to the site.
And the Foreign Minister stated "This is not a time to use bodies as hostages or pawns"
So between the three of them i am not sure who has dibs on stupid behind the eight ball crown,
but whatever it is these politicians are smoking...i would like some
"They're removing bodies from the crash site, often times without the care that we would
expect … [and rebels' behavior toward the crash site is] an insult to those who've lost
loved ones."
Speech from Dutch head of expert team in crash site:
"I'm very impressed about the work that was done over here," "I think they did a hell
of a job in a hell of a place."
Russia: Has images of Ukraine deploying BUK Rockets in east.
Russia: Ukraine moved BUK near rebels in Donetsk.
Russia detected Ukrainian fighter jet pick up speed toward MH17
I hope Obama is not going to capitalize on the deaths of passengers on MH 17 in his crusade
against the Russians. I would also think that the Kiev government is not immune to investigation.
Why have their fighter jets cameras not been checked? Why did the air traffic controllers in
Kiev divert this plane. Could they have been under orders from Kiev to divert it to this area
in Donetsk, where the Ukrainian army does have BUK missiles, and ordered it shot down so they
could fan the flames against Russia and the East Ukrainian fighters? This would be a typical
Nazi trick and considering their total lack of respect for human life after the Odessa burning
of innocent people and the constant shelling and the deaths of innocent civilians in East Ukraine.
This is one scenario I would not overlook. These men in Kiev are desperate, and that can bring
about very interesting results. I myself would like to see a proper investigation into this
crash that includes the Kiev government, that everyone seems to think can do no wrong. Still,
it is too early to tell what really happened, I also agree with Putin that this crash should
not be used for political gain, and that a proper investigation should be done by international
experts to determine who, if anyone, shot this plane down.
Every time the prime minister of Ukraine holds a conference to rant against "the bastard"
Russians and invent tales I get a chilling feeling we are looking at a mass murderer
If I were the guardian editor. I would start being a bit more impartial in the reporting
and apportioning blame on this terrible atrocity round about now. Obama will let Kiev take all
the flak if they really are banged to rights. Going overboard with the US narrative might bite
you on the posterior, if the Russians have compelling evidence to the contrary. At the very
least, at the end off this you could end up looking a bit silly.
The "fighter" jet line doesn't seem to hold much water. A quick google will tell you an SU25
is a ground attack aircraft incapable of intercepting an airliner. It's altitude ceiling is
too low and at its maximum speed would barely be able to catch up with a 777 at cruising speed.
If the Ukrainians really did want to shoot down a passenger jet they would have used an aircraft
better suited to the job.
So no mention by the Guardian on today's press conference by the Russian Defence Ministry
showing Ukraine lied about t ssia', that Ukraine moved Buks into the area of the MH17 crash
shortly before, and that Ukraine lied when it said there were no Ukrainian military aircraft
tailing the MH17 before the crash and staying around afterwards until the plane hit the ground?
My, my.....Where is our Western media when you need them? Guess I will have to go back to
RT and ZeroHedge for my updates.
The Russians have come out in the last few hours saying that they were tracking a Ukranian
SU-25 fighter jet climbing up towards MH17.
The Ukranians have claimed they had no aircraft in the air that day, so if this proves to
be true it would go a long way to support the Ukranians shooting it down themselves, not the
rebels. Why would they lie about having a fighter in the air? Russians have also confirmed a
US spy satellite was overhead at the time of the incident and have called on the US to release
the photos and data. Why would they do that if they were lying, also?
It now seems painfully apparent that Kiev thought shooting down the plane would compell NATO
to intervene on their behalf. They were very vocal about that immediately after the crash, but
it didn't happen. With each passing day they (Kiev) have grown more frustrated. Meanwhile, Washington
is frustrated in its effort to throw all blame onto Russia for the civil war in Ukraine (which
is the result of the US-inspired coup, after all).
Circumstantially, the hand of Ukrainian forces looks most likely here. They are acting
least rational / most bellicose.
Those believing Ukraine's Government not capable of shooting MH17 down themselves in order
to blame it on east Ukraine sepratists really need their head examined.
He started with "We support Israel" just as a hospital was shelled in Gaza.
But it got worse. He said something like "rebels preventing access to investigators for days".
First, the investigators only arrived today, and second, MSM has been reporting and quoting
the investigators going around the crash site and conducting their investigation for at least
a couple of hours now.
It gets even worse. Obama claimed that the rebels are not allowing the bodies to be released.
The rebels have asked the investigators to oversee the transportation of the bodies hours ago
and the investigators have agreed. The journalists on the ground have been reporting a Kiev
offensive targeting the areas around the railway tracks, that is what is preventing the trains
from leaving.
Who is briefing him, Monica Lewinski? How is it that we are more informed of the situation
from simply reading this live blog than the president of the US is with his NSA and CIA?
Poroshenko actually had the brass neck to say: "The Ukrainian people were never so united
as today".
Maybe he hasn't noticed that his Ukrainian armed forces are using combat aircraft and artillery
against Ukrainian people. Iraq is about as united as Ukraine at the moment.
The leaders of this Ukrainian regime seem to live in some bizarre parallel universe.
News. Press-conference of the Russian Defense Ministry: maps, charts, data. Note: pictures
Ukrainian military aircraft. There is an English translation.
The Russion defense miliatry appear to have the first pieces of solid evidence. I'll be interesting
to see how the 'non-putinbots' dismatle it ... presumably not with logic.
Why is not on the headlines that Russia is asking for an explanation for the presence of
an Ukrainian fighter jets flying close to the Malaysian airplane and the satellite pictures
showing that there were Ukrainian missiles positioned near this area?
Does anyone know what John Pilger has to say about this atrocity perpetrated by those peace-loving
rebels of the DPR, under the triumvirate of Gubarev, Strelkov and Borodai??
Say what you like about the Yanks, but at least they admitted to shooting down the Iranian
airliner back in 1988, and paid out compensation to the families...although admittedly no American
was ever brought to justice for that war crime...
I also have a deja vu feeling about the disinformation that came out, claiming the transponders
etc were not working, islands being removed from maps at press briefings showing they were in
international waters etc.
As someone once said, you can fool some of the people all the time, but nobody ever knows
they are the fool in quesiton.
One would have thought the Guardian would have changed its headline given the evidence emerging
regarding a 2cd plane, I am sure Russia has even more to follow and is allowing both Kiev and
Washington to dig themselves into a very very deep hole.
Shame on the Guardian for not reporting this in the same vein as it reports hearsay,
unverified, uncorroborated "evidence".
And why was the plane diverted by 300 km and ordered to fly lower? They are fairly easy questions
but none of the media are asking and there certainly aren't any answers. It's a crucial area
of investigation and it doesn't need presence at the. Rash site; just to explain
According to the DM this plane was instructed to divert off path, previous Malaysian flights
used a different route? But as tragic as it is, in Gaza now over 500 dead incl many kids, we
can't bring back lost lives but we can prevent future deaths so why is Obama and Cameron not
condemning the continuous bombing in Gaza?
I'm pointing out the double standards applying. Also that human lives are equal, whether
Europeans or Palestinians or whatever races. And that backing those who take the lives of innocents
is wrong, and that is whether unknowingly and by accident as with Mh17 (which even people who
reckon rebels shot down the flight, believe happened) or as in Gaza, where it was always obvious
civilians deaths would occur.
As usual Russia, in particular Putin, is guilty until proven innocent.
The latter won't be permitted because the US and the Ukrainian nazis will control proceedings,
and the lightweight idiots posing as EU top dogs will cheer from the sidelines.
Putin is showing extraordinary restraint and patience having to deal with a vigorous stream
of lies.
If you only listened to the BBC and CNN and other Western media, they would have you believe
that the only possible explanation of the shooting-down of MH-17 all comes down to Russia being
guilty.
After all, the BUK missiles are Russian-made. These missiles require technical expertise
which the Russians have. The pro-Russia rebels previously shot down aircraft in the same area.
And all of this is conclusive even before any serious investigation of the site has even been
started!
1) Assertion 1 – the missile is Russian-made, and so the Russians must have provided it
to the Rebels. The Ukraine military has 60 BUK systems, of which 3 were in the crash zone
last week. Moreover, several Ukrainian military bases lost equipment to the rebels during the
past few months of military conflict. So just because Russia makes some equipment does not mean
that it directly supplied the rebels.
2) Assertion 2 – the BUK missile system requires technical expertise to operate it, and
so the Russians must have provided it to the Rebels. Since Ukraine/Soviet military has been
using the BUK system 1972, they clearly have the competence to use this equipment. So the Ukrainian
military have both the equipment and the training to operate the BUK system. Some of the Ukrainian
military in Eastern Ukraine defected to join the pro-Russia rebels. So it is not unreasonable
to expect that some of the relevant expertise (to operate the BUK system) came to the rebels
when those military personnel defected.
3) Assertion 3 – the pro-Russia rebels have previously shot down aircraft in the area,
so obviously it must have been them again. When the rebels shot down aircraft before, these
were planes and helicopters used by the Ukrainian military. They were flying at 6,000 feet or
less (unlike the 32,000 feet of MH-17) and therefore were accessible by less sophisticated surface-to-air
missile systems. On the other hand, the Ukraine military shot down a Russian passenger jet carrying
78 civilians with a Russian-made SA-200 missile system in 2001. They initially denied it, until
after 8 days they were presented with irrefutable proof, at which time they confessed to their
"mistake".
4) Motive and who would benefit from this action. If Ukrainian military performed
this heinous act, then Ukraine would have a lot to gain. Firstly, they would glee in Russia's
pain – in fact, they are already enjoying the fact that Russia is incurring the threat of more
sanctions and bad press. Secondly, they could provoke NATO and other foreign troops to come
in to protect the crash site in rebel-controlled areas. Thirdly, and their highest priority,
the combination of the first two points would increase the chances of the Ukrainian military
to defeat the pro-Russia rebels, once and for all, after several months of trying.
5) Recorded telephone and twitter conversations proving the involvement of the pro-Russia
rebels. I saw on two non-Western TV channels how speech experts had analysed the audio from
the alleged phone discussions to identify fragments of the audio had been originally recorded
prior to last Thursday when the tragedy happened. In other words, the alleged phone discussion
was nothing more than re-configured audio fragments to result in a fabricated phone recording.
6) The involvement of Russians fighting with the pro-Russia rebels does not equate to
the involvement of the Russian state. The fact that Russians support their "brethren" in
Eastern Ukraine does not automatically mean that the Russian state is involved. This would be
like saying that Britain has boots-on-the-ground in Syria, just because nearly 1000 Britons
have gone over there to join the fight. These are merely British individuals who have gone over
there in a personal capacity, similar to the British and French ex-military mercenaries who
can be found fighting in conflicts all over Africa. They are there in their personal capacities
without the consent of their state.
Conclusion
Unlike Western media and politicians, I cannot draw a conclusion regarding who perpetrated
this terrible act. In my view, it is premature, too hasty and disrespectful to any system of
justice to jump to such conclusions, accusations and talk of sanctions before any investigation
has even begun. What I am highlighting in the above 6 points is that questions still need to
be asked.
Ukraine officials today. We are not shelling the train station in Donetsk.
CNN reporter on site in Donetsk today. Ukrainian forces are shelling the train station
in Donetsk.
Yes, we really believe the Kiev government. They always present the truth, whether it's is
about those in Odessa setting fire to themselves or rebel forces bombing their own cities. They
must be since the ministry states that Ukraine never has planes in the air when the bombing
occurs.
So exactly what is three benefit to the eastern guys to be hiding bodies? Just getting some
blame in early to make the official enemy clear? By the way this is a war zone...
You can add this to the list of conspiracy theories that turned out to be facts
[Jul 21, 2014] Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko denies a claim by Russia's defense ministry
that a Ukrainian warplane flew near MH17 at the time of the crash
Poor Peter Poroshenko...
Poroshenko tells CNN that "this is not true", that the area was being surveilled at the time,
and that his government would be open to any investigation on the issue. "Everybody knows that in
this period of time … all Ukrainian planes were on the ground [near Grabovo, where the plane crashed.]"
Russia's defense ministry held a briefing earlier Monday in which it made several claims and
suggested they could possibly explain how and why MH17 was shot down. First among these claims was
that a Ukrainian fighter jet, a Su-25, was in the area. Another scenario involved the passenger
plane straying from its flight plan. The air force general, Andrei Karatolov, did not directly accuse
Ukraine of shooting down MH17, and the ministry
handed journalists slides
arguing for the claims.
Ukraine fighter jet flew close to Malaysian plane before crash, says Russian Defense
Ministry #MH17pic.twitter.com/g7ktU7ZGJ3
In the days since the downing of MH17 a lot of people have jumped to conclusions prematurely.
Evidence provided by the Ukrainian Security Service, combined with the results of social media investigations,
suggests the Ukrainian authorities have been less than honest in key disclosures of information
to date.
Firstly, condolences to those who have lost their loved ones on MH17. This is a terrible tragedy.
A lot of the media and governments have jumped to conclusions about the responsibility for the
downing of the Boeing 777. It is rather distasteful when this happens, particularly as in many cases
the primary interest of those making their minds up before a proper investigation is propagandistic.
Key principles of propaganda are to try to get your side of the story in first, to repeat lies and
half-truths until the they are accepted as truth and to demonize an enemy in order to encourage
hatred.
It is to be hoped that the investigation proper will be professionally run and unbiased. Given
the geopolitical implications, it is difficult to be very optimistic about that though, having the
examples of the Lockerbie investigation and the recent
UN/OPCW investigation into Ghouta in mind.
We hope those most concerned, the victims and their families, will learn the truth and also see
a measure of justice.
Anyway, having spent some time examining the evidence which has so far come to light, it seems
necessary to make a small contribution, to hopefully get a bit closer to the truth and away from
the current atmosphere – which most resembles a witch-hunt.
The US has claimed in a statement on the
Kiev Embassy web site
that: At the time that flight MH17 dropped out of contact, we detected a surface-to-air missile
(SAM) launch from a separatist-controlled area in southeastern Ukraine. We believe this missile
was an SA-11.
Intercepts of separatist communications posted on YouTube by the Ukrainian government indicate
the separatists were in possession of a SA-11 system as early as Monday July 14th. In the intercepts,
the separatists made repeated references to having and repositioning Buk (SA-11) systems.
Social media postings on Thursday show an SA-11 system traveling through the separatist-controlled
towns of Torez and Snizhne, near the crash site and assessed location of the SAM launch. From this
location, the SA-11 has the range and altitude capability to have shot down flight MH17.
The Security Services of Ukraine (SBU) have provided
photos
and video to the media which they claim show SA-11 buk systems returning to Russia after having
brought the plane down.
The photo extract below, showing a buk, has surfaced, (from where noone is sure) and has been
geolocated to the town of Torez (a town close to the MH17 crash site which has seen conflict between
some of the locals and members of Oleg Laschko's
Battalion of neo-Nazis.)
This photo and a video clip issued by the SBU are being used to suggest that the downing of the
MH17 must have been by the "separatists" who then returned the missile system to Russia.
Now, it is too early to determine with certainty who fired the missile and who bears legal responsibility
for the tragedy. But it is interesting to note that the below photo, provided to Ukrainian media
by the SBU, also shows a buk on a trailer. In this photo we can see the serial number of the buk
which is 312.
There are a number of sub-plots to this story, including the fact that the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General
says that Ukraine has not lost any "buks" to the rebels and, of course, the question of why, if
they had, the Ukrainians didn't close their air space to civilian traffic.
But something particularly interesting is that rather than coming from Russia as Ukraine is claiming,
buk number 312 appears to be a Ukrainian buk. The evidence for that is in the video below, uploaded
5th March of this year, where we can see a number of Ukrainian buks all lined up in a place called
Horlivka (or Gorlovka). The third buk in the line is number 312.
So, it appears that at least one of the buks, which the SBU claim belongs to Russia, is actually
Ukrainian.
According to information provided by the Russians, the Ukrainians had 27 Buk MI complexes of
the 156th AA missile regiment in the disaster area on 17th of July.
It is essential that the Ukrainians provide a full inventory of all their Buk M1s and precise
movements of each of these vehicles – rather than producing pictures of their own vehicles which
they hold out as belonging to the rebels – and they should do that immediately.
-- It would be much appreciated if readers could make a contribution to the cause using the donate
button above.
Another CIA false flag operation like in Kiev(nazi snipers in the hotel) and Odessa(agent
provocateurs with red armbands collaborating with the police) is the most likely scenario. I
think the most effective way to expose this is to analyze the "evidence" that was fabricated
by SBU and CIA.
The US was involved in such terrorist acts in the past:
"Declassified CIA and FBI records posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive
at George Washington University identify Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, who is apparently
in Florida seeking asylum, as a former CIA agent and as one of the "engineer[s]" of the
1976 terrorist bombing of Cubana Airlines flight 455 that killed 73 passengers."
A representative of the rebels in Donetsk confirmed to Reuters that the separatist group has
agreed to hand over the black boxes this evening.
The situation in Donetsk, through which the train of victims' bodies will pass, remains unstable.
Journalist Noah Sneider tweets
that a "massive convoy of rebels and equipment on the road near Shakhtyorsk [is] heading away from
Donetsk. Cars, buses, tanks, APCs, maybe [about] 50 total."
Black boxes will be handed over at 9pm local time, according to Malaysia's Prime Minister
Razak.
Even though this agreement had been made with the rebels, Najib stressed that a "number of steps"
still had to be taken in order for the required work to be completed. The rebels had agreed to ensure
that "continued cooperation" between all relevant parties took place.
Even though it was clear that Malaysia was gravely upset over the way the investigation had so
far been handled, Najib said it was up to the government to promote peace and calm in order to get
things done and that he hoped these developments would a step in the right direction.
"In recent days, there were times I wanted to give greater voice to the anger and grief that
the Malaysian people feel. And that I feel. But sometimes, we must work quietly in the service of
a better outcome."
But it was the Ukrainian army that seemed intent on disrupting expert work on Monday, as they
apparently launched an offensive against rebel positions close to Donetsk railway station, as well
as in other towns across the region.
"There is work on clearing approaches to the city, on
destroying checkpoints of the terrorists. If there are explosions in the middle of the city, then
it is not Ukrainian soldiers," said Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for
Ukraine's national security council, in Kiev.
Adding to the chaos, Lysenko denied that the Ukrainian army was responsible for explosions in
central Donetsk but said a "self-organised group" of partisans could be engaging the rebels.
"We have strict orders not to use air strikes and artillery in the city. If there is fighting
in the city, we have information that there is a small self-organised group who are fighting with
the terrorists," he said.
Vladislav Seleznev, spokesman for Ukraine's anti-terror operation, said the action was "a planned
offensive" to push rebels away from Donetsk airport, and insisted that aviation and artillery were
not being used against civilian residences.
However, there were reports of civilian casualties. The Guardian saw one 18-storey building where
a shell had hit the courtyard, smashing all the windows on the first nine floors and destroying
parked cars.
Trucks of rebels could be seen travelling past the station as reinforcements. Gunfire and artillery
rounds were audible. One rebel fighter claimed the Ukrainians had tried to take the area around
the train station with tanks but the rebels were fighting back.
The Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, ordered a ceasefire across a 40km (24-mile) radius
from the crash site, but this does not include Donetsk, which is further out.
Guardian editors were probably terrified that nobody buy State Department talking points and closed
discussion after 31 comment (in 14 minutes). The first comment was published at 6:06 PM and the last
at 6:20)
So is the U.S., as the sponsor of Israel, responsible for the safety of UN investigators
and humanitarian operatives in Gaza?
If Obama's statement is supposed to be based on some kind of principle, then there is no
way to conclude otherwise.
Of course, none of U.S. foreign policy is based on principle; only agenda, packaged in the
language of principle.
Victor Chan, 21 July 2014 6:04pm
And because???? Obama said so? Or because???? Putin is already found guilty and he has to
prove his innocent??? Hehehe.... Because the Obama administration does not have proofs to show
that it was the separatists who shot down the plane? I am sure the CIA and the NSA have proofs
that it was an Ukrainian jet fighter which shot down the plane. They won't reveal it or to say
it because it would help Putin and to discredit Ukraine and the Obama administration. Now, Putin
has to show the world that it was an Ukrainian fighter jet which shot the down plane?
martinusher, 21 July 2014 6:06pm
Short of Russian troops securing the area I don't know how Russia could 'rein in' the locals.
We're talking as if these people are directly controlled from Moscow (which they obviously aren't
because this wouldn't have happened in the first place). We're also talking as if chaos and
confusion is the norm at the crash scene when it looks as if things are quite well organized
considering the circumstances.
The amount of bluster coming from our leaders is starting to worry me. I'd expect them to
milk this tragedy for all its worth -- that's what politicians do --- but the way its unfolding
is starting to suggest to me that things aren't quite as they seem.
42Robert42, 21 July 2014 6:06pm
Obama....Your administration is quick off the mark to denounce Putin and Russia without comprehensive
proof (over the downing of MH17), yet you are agonizingly slow to denounce Israel when you have
proof beyond doubt, with dead Palestinian bodies piling up by the minute. Double standards what?
Georwell, 21 July 2014 6:07pm
Please, mr Obama, come back and show us the US satellite pictures...the US radar records....
please ask Ukr to publish the Kiev radar records.... Please show us SOMETHING... cuz you have
so many spy toys there, right ?....
And some [should] inform Potus the bad terrorist rebels move the remains not to destroy evidence,
but to stop the decay and wild animals ...
All hands up, on mid time, for Malaysian envoy who manage to take control of the train and
make the first REAL step on the process of returning the victims remains to the familiars...
he has done in one day MORE then all shameless politicians...
Blimey, I'm starting to feel like a one-man news-desk on this issue - if you missed my earlier
bulletin here it is again...
Can we at least end the trance-like delusion about denial of
access to the site for air-crash investigators, continuing to be repeated like a zombie mantra.
"The burden now is on Russia to insist that the separatists stop tampering with the evidence,
grant investigators, who are already on the ground, full and unimpeded access to the crash
site. The separatists and their Russian sponsors are responsible for the safety of investigators
doing their work."
Observers have only had limited access up until today yes. The Dutch experts, who are the
first foreign air-crash experts to arrive (note, none have arrived and been denied access)
have had no restrictions placed on them. If an army of journalists can reach the site...
Pro Russian rebels at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 have granted European
monitors and experts nearly "unfettered access" to wreckage Monday, according to a spokesman
for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
The rebels even provided some perimeter security to keep journalists at bay, creating
a "dome of tranquility" for the OSCE monitors, three Dutch forensic experts and a handful
of Ukranian aviation experts now at the scene, Michael Bociurkiw said Monday in a briefing
hosted by the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center.
Here is something besides the propaganda, from on of our own Congressman Ron Paul:
"Western
politicians and media joined together to gain the maximum propaganda value from the disaster.
It had to be Russia; it had to be Putin, they said," the former presidential candidate wrote.
"While western media outlets rush to repeat government propaganda on the event, there are a
few things they will not report."
One of those unreported things, Paul claimed in his weekly "Texas Straight Talk" column,
was the United States' own responsibility for destabilizing the region. Ukraine is currently
embroiled in violent conflict between the Ukrainian government and the pro-Russian separatists.
"They will not report that the crisis in Ukraine started late last year, when EU and US-supported
protesters plotted the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Without
US-sponsored 'regime change,' it is unlikely that hundreds would have been killed in the unrest
that followed. Nor would the Malaysian Airlines crash have happened," Paul wrote.
ID9793630, 21 July 2014 6:20pm
Well this brings us back to the point: If Putin is to be held directly responsible for the
safety of investigators, shouldn't he be given a 'free pass' to send his troops into Ukraine
to provide reliable security? After all the government in Kiev does not seem to have an adequate
mandate to govern the country and does not seem to be too competent or trustworthy in security
matters.... ; )
I don't know who shoot down the Boeing. But I am sure that something went wrong. For the past
two days propaganda machine of the world's media is clearly stalled. Information offence exhausted
itself within 24 hours. It does not happen without serious cause. Because all the signs "sensation
of the world level" is obvious: almost three hundred victims, "terrorists, mocks the remains of
the victims", geopolitical scandal involving Russia. Official Kiev produces "evidence of a terrorist
attack" with the speed of the conveyor belt. From "fire spotters", detained on the border with the
Russian Federation, to records of the conversations between field commanders telling details of
destruction of Boeing 777.
The only thing that is missing from Kiev propaganda is the confessions of a rocket that hit civilian
aircraft. And why Western media is reluctant to continue the hysteric is veiw of those Kiev "revelations"?
What they (the Western MSM) are still missing?
You know, during the so-called " hot phase" of the EuroMaidan" (February) hysteria in the Western
MSM was tremendously higher. The important statements followed each other every two to three hours.
Were dusted off and put of 24 by 7 duty all the speakers, experts, representatives of "human
rights" organizations. The State Department and the European Commission literally competed in the
amount of messages that were issued per hour. The information bar "Interfax-Ukraine" literally all
was red (the color of highlight the most important leads that precede the information itself). None
of that we can observe now. After initial artillery bombardment for three days all is quite on the
Eastern front. Just poor Jogn "Assad poisoned his citizens with sarin" Kerry trying to sustain the
attack. This is at least strange. The impression is that at the last moment the necessary provocation
went wrong, the plane crashed in the wrong place, and now the designers need to take a break to
adapt the script. There are still very little proven facts that would allow to build an easy to
understand picture of this event. However, we still try.
Almost immediately after the tragedy with the "Boeing" a massive offensive of all Kiev forces
in the direction of Lugansk and Donetsk started. The battles are now conducted in the suburbs of
those two megalopolises. And no one cares about civilian casualties. On Sunday defense Minister
Galatea reported about a whole series of military victories." Among them - the next unblocking of
Luhansk and Donetsk airports, the occupation of the South-East of Lugansk, blocking all the channels
of receipt of military aid to militia. Igor Strelkov, according to available reports, reported heavy
fighting. Information about "liberation" of the two airports was not confirmed. The enemy, according
to militia, throws into battle tanks and armored personnel Carriers without infantry support.
Small raiding "death squards" are active in the Metropolitan area, killing everyone. The official
propaganda is interpreting this as the "rebellion of the local population, killing the militants."
There are not new about military units, which fell in the boiler in the area of Ukrainian-Russian
border. Occasionally appear posts, were solgers ask ATO command to send reinforcements.
Tanks must break into the Donetsk and Lugansk to push the ball in the centre and "to hoist the
Ukrainian flag. Where - is not important. To perform this task thrown all available in ATU resources
and reserves.
It becomes clear: the command of the ATO has set the task to take the Luhansk and Donetsk at
any price up to a certain date. Often July 22 is cited. Cities-satellites should be, apparently,
just wiped off the face of the earth. Tanks must break into the Donetsk and Lugansk and rush to
the center in order to "to hoist the Ukrainian flag." What will be the price is not important. To
perform this task all available in ATO resources and reserves are thrown into the fire. They do
not pay attention to communication and supply, which is stretched. Simultaneously a campaign of
conducted a campaign in the style of "victorious advance of the forces of ATO, hundreds of militants
surrendering leadership fled to Russia" is conducted via Ukrainian MSM.
And let's get back to the Boeing. The impression is that the plane crash was a signal to the
beginning of a massive attack. As the three green missiles. Were they waiting for, when somebody
knocks a Boeing 777? No, of course. The most likely was the following scenario was to abuse the
situation when the world was hit by this terrible tragedy How to best use this situation? First,
to declare Russia "the center of international terrorism" and a "rogue state". Secondly, block the
rebellious regions from supplies and wait. Whether coming of "precision weapons" from the USA, "peacekeeping
forces", or facts, irrefutable evidence of the involvement of Putin personally to the tragedy
Besides continuing his rants against Russia, Yats also
dropped this little gem:
Он также уточнил, что украинские военные не использовали в ходе проведения силовой операции
на востоке ракеты класса "земля-воздух".
"Украинское министерство обороны даст всю информацию о местонахождении всех ракет противовоздушной
обороны", - отметил премьер.
TRANSLATION
He also clarified that Ukraininan troops did NOT use any rocket of the "ground to air" class,
at any time in the course of the conflict in the East. "The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense will
give all information about the location of all rockets of anti-air defense," the P.M. replied.
END OF TRANSLATION
Reading between the lines:
(1) Nobody in the international community (not even Ukraine's staunchest allies) trusts Ukraine
to properly handle either bodies or crash investigation; and
(2) Nobody in the international community (not even Ukraine's staunchest allies) trusts Ukraine
about its ground-to-air status, until they give a complete audit of all their hardware and where
it is located.
yalensis, yes, I agree. However much public embracing of Ukraine into the European 'family'
has gone on, no European or world leader places any confidence in Ukraine and its politicians
whatsoever.
The EU and, particularly the Dutch, however, have missed a trick. They should have insisted
from the get-go that Kiev immediately release the recording of the conversation between the
Kiev control tower and MH17.
Now the records have been taken over by the SBU so the chances of ever hearing an undoctored
version are pretty slim.
Is there ANYTHING these Sky News reporters are not capable of doing?
I watched the whole video on youtube, but some reason it can't be linked from there, as it
tries to "embed" itself. In the full video, the reporter first sheds some crocodile tears over
the victims, and then praises himself for his "sensitivity" in not showing bodies or body parts.
He then proceeds to rifle through somebody's luggage, "It's a small girl's bag, I think,"
he picks up some pink object right out of the suitcase that once belonged to a child…
then pauses to comment: "We shouldn't really be doing this."
And these hyenas were the ones accusing the Rebels of looting!
Putting it concisely: Apparently every BUK has a number, which is painted on
the side. This particular BUK is #312.
SBU, in making their case that "Rebs dunnit", posted the photo (2 photos down) showing BUK
#312 being hauled on a trailer-truck, supposedly from Russia, across the border to deliver to
Rebels.
However, the video (beneath the photo), which was taken in March, shows a bunch of Ukrainian
BUK's, including #312, driving in a convoy near the town of Horlivka.
Vid was taken from dashcam of a car, it drives past BUK's with the following numbers painted
on them:
321, 312 (at :37 seconds in), 301, 331, 332,.
From this, it follows that BUK #312 is Ukrainian army, NOT Russian.
Thinking logically:
I suppose it's possible there could be two BUK's with the same number, one from Russia,
and the other from Ukraine (?)
Other possibility is that #312 belonged to Ukraine, was captured by Rebs, taken to Russia
for fixing up, then returned from Russia to Rebs (?)
In any case, I think it is good that "international community" is asking Ukraine for a full
audit of all their ground-to-air hardware.
More news from PPRUNE that might back up Carlos, ATC at Borisopol who tweeted under Spainbuca
that ukranian military aircraft were by the 777 3 minutes before the event. Where is Carlos
since all foreign ATCs were kicked out by Ukranian security and ATC tapes siezed???
According to an authoritative source, two Su-27 Flankers escorted the Malaysian Boeing 777
minutes before it was hit by one or more missiles.
The Aviationist " ?All flights, including Malaysian B777, were being escorted by Ukrainian
Su-27 Flanker jets over Eastern Ukraine?
A quote:
Quote:
In other words: since the Russian interceptors had downed a Su-25 on the previous days, the
Ukrainian escorted all military and civil flights over eastern Ukraine on Jul. 17. Including
MH17.
It seems that despite the best efforts of Washington, London and their acolytes to bounce the
EU into serious sanctions against Russia when they meet in Brussels on Tuesday, cooler heads
are prevailing and are sticking to their line that they want to see the investigation in to
MH17 play out, not rush any actions.
Is this the last throw of the US/UK dice?
Cameron blasted Merkel and others who don't follow his line in the Sunday Times recently,
but taken in light of the drubbing he has got over trying to get someone else rather than Juncker
and his appointment of a EuroCommisar being put on hold (all Commission appointees are on hold
until another EU meeting in Brussels in August), then it is clear that Cameron is playing to
his domestic political audience and trying to win/keep votes from UKIP supporters.
Russian
materials will be sent to the experts of the leading European countries and Malaysia.
The chief of the main operational Department of the General staff of Russian armed forces, Lieutenant
General Andrey Kartupelu told that the place of hitting of Malaysian Boeing fall into the zone of
targeting of Ukrainian Buk systems.
Also SU-25 attack aircraft. was spotted next to the passenger plane.
The downing of Malaysian Airlines flight 17 (MH17)
is a tragedy that will be remembered for years to come. However, the way in which
the West has distorted the facts about what happened is no mere accident. Rather, it
is a clear attempt by Washington and its allies and proxies to capitalize on the
incident, using it as a weapon in their continued belligerent and aggressive
policies toward Russia.
Recent days have seen a deluge of propaganda from
both the US Government and the western media (especially US media) which, despite
being short on facts, has attempted to place the blame for MH17 squarely on Russia
and Russian President Vladimir Putin. While this certainly is no surprise given the
public demonization campaign of Russia throughout the conflict in Ukraine, it
undoubtedly crosses the line from laughable to utterly irresponsible and dangerous.
Given the already icy relations between the two countries, it seems that Washington
has as part of its strategy the inflammation of tensions.
But why? What does the US political establishment,
which includes both major parties, hope to gain from this tragedy? Or, perhaps more
specifically, how does the United States plan to capitalize on the incident? The
propaganda, spin, and outright lies from Western media cannot be understood in a
vacuum. Rather, they must be recognized as part and parcel of the larger political
agenda of the West both in Ukraine, and Eastern Europe as a whole.
Lies, Damned Lies, and Western Media
Although the investigation into the crash has only
just begun, that has not stopped Washington from attempting to shape the narrative
into an indictment of Russia, accusing Moscow of being behind the attacks. Headlines
such as
White House Blames Russia For MH17 Crash, Saying There's No Believable Alternative
(Huffington Post) and
Congress: MH17 Crash Is 'Ac of Terror,' and Putin May Be To Blame (The Daily
Beast), both of which interestingly come from "liberal" media outlets, have become
routine in recent days. The not so subtle, indeed overt, implication of such
headlines is that Russia is responsible for the downing of MH17, despite there being
no evidence to that effect.
Essentially, the US political establishment, and its
corporate media appendage, attempted to make a flimsy case into a politically
expedient narrative that would bolster the US-NATO agenda in Ukraine, while
simultaneously legitimizing the belligerent, anti-Russian rhetoric and policies that
the White House and Congress have been pursuing. Moreover, Washington has attempted
to use the incident to deflect attention from the brutal war crimes and other
embarrassing aspects of the US-backed Kiev regime's horrific war against the people
of eastern Ukraine.
The specific lies, omissions, and distortions
propagated by Washington and its dutiful media servants must be recalled in order to
debunk them, but perhaps more importantly, to demonstrate the clear and unmistakable
way in which they have been used to cobble together a false narrative that, despite
being an admitted fabrication, will be made permanent in the minds of many
Americans.
The Kiev regime has proclaimed repeatedly that
Russia was behind the attack, offering "evidence" of "Russian participation." The
first piece of "evidence" were the
tape recordings that purportedly provided proof that anti-Kiev rebels and, by
implication, Russian agents working with them, had admitted to downing MH17.
However, a careful analysis by renowned digital sound analyst Nikolai Popov and his
team of experts concluded that that the recordings were not authentic, that is to
say, they were cobbled together using various recordings from before the disaster
occurred. As Popov
noted, "This audio recording is not an integral file and is made up of several
fragments."
While Popov's team's findings should not be taken as
gospel, they do call into question the authenticity of the supposed "evidence." In
fact, it is quite likely that the recordings were constructed from actual
conversations by anti-Kiev rebels discussing the downing of a Ukrainian Su-25
fighter jet days before the MH17 incident. Of course, the findings should not be
seen as definitive, but as yet, they constitute the only sound analysis done of the
recordings. It seems more than convenient that neither the US nor any of its
partners have carried such an analysis, and have instead chosen to proclaim the
recordings' authenticity based purely on faith that Kiev is telling the truth.
Naturally, this is a dangerous assumption considering the established pattern of
lying by Kiev to further its war against the citizens of the East.
Indeed, the regime in Kiev has lied its way
throughout the last week with almost every statement and piece of "evidence" it has
provided. Yet another example can be found in the video the government released
which purportedly showed a Russian Buk missile battery with at least one missile
missing moving in the direction of Russia from rebel-held territory. Unfortunately
for Kiev, the videos have been examined by many familiar with the region and exposed
as distortions insofar as they actually show the Buk systems in Kiev-controlled
territory, not rebel areas as Poroshenko & Co. have alleged. And so, with this
information, it raises the question not only of Kiev's lies regarding Russian
involvement, but also the far more sinister likelihood that it was, in fact, Kiev's
military forces, whether under orders or simply through irresponsibility and
negligence, that actually downed MH17.
Additionally, one must examine the claims made and
repeated ad nauseam by Kiev that it had no military aircraft in the skies when MH17
was shot down. From July 17 (the day of the incident) until July 21 (the day
Russia's Ministry of Defense presented its intelligence), the Kiev regime
continually denied allegations that its military aircraft were in the vicinity of
MH17. However, once Russia's MoD provided the international press with evidence
refuting that claim and showing that not only were Ukrainian jets in the vicinity,
but they were within firing range, magically that talking point ceased to be
repeated. In other words, every aspect of the Kiev regime's narrative has been
thoroughly discredited.
And so, by July 23rd, the media headlines which had,
until that point, simply been reiterating the claims made by Kiev and using "US
assessments" (whatever that's worth), began to finally admit that there is
absolutely no evidence directly tying Russia to the incident. So, the US State
Department, along with nearly all major media, were exposed as part of a
comprehensive propaganda matrix designed to further US foreign policy aims, rather
than report information accurately and objectively. More to the point, just two days
earlier, the US State Department made the claim that it had the intelligence to
"prove" Russian involvement but, when pressed by Associated Press journalist Matt
Lee, refused to provide any hard evidence, be it intelligence or reconnaissance
imagery, to support their claims.
So once again Secretary of State John Kerry, and the
entire State Department, have been made to look foolish in their rush to accuse
Russia of wrongdoing, as was the case with the Secretary of State regurgitating the
discredited claim of anti-semitic leaflets being handed out by anti-Kiev rebel
forces. The US media, like the State Department, obviously have egg on their face,
as can be demonstrated quite clearly by the NY Post headlines of July 22nd and July
23rd. On July 22nd, the Post printed on its cover the headline "Dear Vlad – 'Thank
you…for murdering my loved and only child'", followed less than twenty four hours
later with the headline "US: No direct link to Russia found in MH17 attack." This
sort of shameful propaganda, designed to enflame anti-Russian sentiments, rather
than report facts, is standard fare for US media and the corporate interests it
serves.
Washington's Political Agenda
The attempts by the US and its allies and proxies to
blame Russia for the downing of MH17 expose a transparently cynical foreign policy
in Ukraine, and Eastern Europe more broadly, that seeks to dominate and intimidate
Russia politically, economically, and militarily. Naturally, this strategy is doomed
to fail as the Russia of 2014 is certainly not the Russia of 1994. The MH17 episode
is a case in point, showing just how the Washington and Kiev have tried to
capitalize on every opportunity to achieve strategic goals by demonizing Russia.
A close look at some of the statements from the
State Department in recent days illustrates clearly the way in which the Obama
administration tried to leverage the disaster in order to buttress the failing war
against the anti-Kiev rebels in eastern Ukraine. US State Department Deputy
Spokesperson Marie Harf indicated in a briefing with reporters that the US asked
Russia to demand that the anti-Kiev rebels "leave the region" in which the crash
occurred so that an investigation could take place. In other words, Washington seeks
to use the MH17 investigation as a backdoor option for Kiev to regain territory that
it has been unable to conquer militarily; an undoubtedly, and quite despicably,
cynical ploy by the US.
But of course, the US is now trying to use the fact
that Russia was not involved in the attack "directly" as a way for Washington to
drive a wedge between Moscow and the anti-Kiev rebels. By stating that Russia is not
"directly" responsible, Washington is attempting to put Putin in a corner by giving
him the opportunity to exonerate himself and Russia by abandoning the anti-Kiev
forces, letting them hang to save his skin. Once again, it seems that the Obama
administration is grossly underestimating Putin's resolve on the issue of Ukraine.
It is quite clear that the Kremlin is never going to allow a hostile regime that is
publicly on the record as seeking NATO participation/observer status and is
outwardly hostile to Russia and ethnic Russians to dominate the whole country and
create problems in the future.
Indeed, this issue of Putin's resolve is central to
understanding why Russia has been so assertive in Ukraine since the crisis began. As
Putin explained
on July 22nd:
We shall provide an adequate and
well-measured response to NATO's expansion towards Russia's borders, and we
shall take note of [the West] setting up a global missile defense architecture
and building up its arsenals of precision-guided weapons…No matter what our
Western counterparts tell us, we can see what's going on. As it stands, NATO is
blatantly building up its forces in Eastern Europe, including the Black Sea and
the Baltic Sea areas. Its operational and combat training activities are gaining
in scale…The so-called competitive struggle at the international arena will
imply the use of tools in both economic and political fields. This will include
the potential of security services, modern information and communication
technologies, and connections of dependent, puppet NGOs – the so-called soft
power…apparently, some countries regard it as democracy.
Such frank tough talk from Putin is a good
indication of why the US regards him and Russia as the primary obstacle to its goal
of maintaining and extending US hegemony. Despite the US missile plans for Eastern
Europe, the continued imposition of punitive sanctions on key individuals and
entities in Russia, the expansion of NATO and its attempt to absorb former Soviet
republics into its sphere of influence, and a host of other issues, Russia stands
firm and undeterred. Whatever one may think about Putin and his government, it's
quite clear that they are not going to succumb to the usual arm-twisting, threats,
blackmail, subversion or destabilization that the US employs to get its way. Perhaps
this, at least in part, explains why Putin is more popular in his country than any
other leader in the world.
The downing of MH17 is a shocking tragedy. The dead
should be mourned alongside the innocent eastern Ukrainians who have also paid with
their lives for the regime change operation that the US sponsored in Ukraine.
However, beyond the sorrow and despair engendered by MH17, the world should focus
its attention on the political maneuvers that the US has employed to capitalize on
the tragedy and, in so doing, moving forward with its agenda of destabilization and
aggression against Russia. Washington's belligerent policy is nothing new. However,
the stakes have never been higher than they are today.
When 298 innocent people were shot out of the sky by a Russian missile 10 days ago, people everywhere
finally began to understand what is at stake in Ukraine.
Half a year ago, I was not even considering becoming president of Ukraine. But like a great many
Ukrainians at the time, I was disturbed that then-president Viktor Yanukovych constrained Ukraine's
future by rejecting an association agreement with the European Union, choosing a customs union with
Moscow instead. Like so many of my countrymen, I believed that for Ukraine to become a modern and
successful country, it needed to expand its ties with the West and end widespread corruption and
abuses of power. Then, the authorities unleashed a murderous assault on demonstrators in Kiev, and
Yanukovych and his partners fled to Russia, leading to Moscow's decision to annex Crimea and support
the violent separatists operating in eastern Ukraine.
Russia's behavior has only worsened since I took office in June. Over the past several weeks,
Ukraine has resisted Russian aggression and continues the fight against the Moscow-backed separatists.
Russia has tested us with its transfer of cash, weapons and other equipment to the separatists and
its vast anti-Western, anti-Kiev propaganda campaign, but we will not yield to its interference
in Ukraine's sovereignty or to the violence perpetuated by terrorists.
Moscow is playing a dangerously irresponsible game. My fears of the violence spiraling out of
control were confirmed July 17, when the separatists used Russian missiles to shoot down Malaysia
Airlines Flight 17. This attack on innocents should never have happened. Like giving a handgun to
a child, Moscow permitted the transfer of a highly sophisticated surface-to-air missile system to
terrorists. With such a large number of lives lost - many of them children - this was a major tragedy.
Adding to the horror has been the casual desecration of the crash site by the separatists, who have
blocked access by investigators, tampered with evidence, looted belongings and treated the dead
like offal.
As president, I have laid the groundwork for peace talks with the separatists by calling for
dialogue along with guarantees of the rights of all Ukrainians. But these calls have been rejected,
and Moscow continues to fan the conflict. It has always been my goal to bring together the parties
and work out solutions for all Ukrainians regardless of geography, ethnicity or language.
To help achieve these solutions, the West should begin thinking about a larger response to what
has happened. As always, the United States should take the lead. Working together with the European
Union, Washington can shape a worldwide coalition of nations in support of Ukraine to ensure that
these terrorists are not able to strike again.
It is important that the United States has instituted stronger sanctions in response to Russia's
aggression in my country. However, in light of this tragedy, the United States should consider imposing
even tougher and wider-reaching sectoral sanctions on Moscow. And Europe needs to follow the lead
of the United States and impose sectoral sanctions of its own.
Russia needs to know that the international community is serious. It is long past time for it
to act.
In addition to broader sanctions, my country needs expedited deliveries of assistance to help
us police our borders and unwind the insurgency with minimal violence.
Even as we address the immediate threat to our country, Ukraine must attend to other pressing
needs. Ukraine can use U.S. leadership and assistance in our efforts to curtail corruption, revive
our financial institutions, reform our energy policy and liberalize our agricultural sector. Additionally,
we need U.S. natural gas to shore up our energy supplies so that we cannot be blackmailed by Moscow.
We need a reliable partner and ally to help fuel our nation.
Now is the time for the international community to stand with Ukraine. To stop Russia, it will
take the global community acting in concert. My country is doing everything it can to take charge
of our destiny: We are working hard to curb corruption, implement much-needed reforms and, above
all, restore the Ukrainian people's faith in their government. Working together, we will not allow
Moscow to stand in the way of creating a new open, united and prosperous Ukraine.
AUSTRALIAN investigators were among a small team to discover more human remains and a crucial
new section of the MH17 wreckage overnight, a week after the plane was shot down over eastern Ukraine.
Two Australian diplomats and a forensic expert, believed to be part of the Australian Federal
Police, have joined Dutch investigators at the Grabovo crash site where key pieces of evidence that
had been previously unaccounted for have been found.
Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) spokesman Michael Bociurkiw escorted
the team of 12 monitors through the crash site overnight and confirmed that they had found more
human remains.
"We saw remains yesterday and we saw one spot of remains today," he said.
They also made what Mr Bociurkiw called "an extraordinary finding", a large and previously overlooked
section of the fuselage, with windows and seats still attached.
Discovered in a wooded area more than a kilometre away from the main crash site, it is the largest
intact piece of the fuselage to be found by investigators.
Mr Bociurkiw said parts of the wreckage that the team inspected yesterday had "almost machinegun
types of holes".
"The Australians are getting a sense of the security for the area, they're mapping it, they're
getting a sense of where the crash sites are," he said, adding that two or three more Australians
were expected to join the inspection team today.
Ohh, those Cameron's poodles... More or less honest report was removed due to " due to structural
defects and incomplete compliance editorial values of the British broadcasting Corporation". Textbook
example of British hypocrisy. I especially like how this pressitute states: "The history of the
downed airliner extremely complex and multifaceted, and we cover it from different sides."
As I promised in his blog on Thursday, we modified the report of correspondent of Russian service
of BBC Olga Ivshina, which on Wednesday was removed from our site.
Before I noted that the original material was removed due to structural defects and incomplete
compliance editorial values of the British broadcasting Corporation. And not for the reason,
which willingly told Russian media that BBC, they say, did not want to broadcast alternative perspective
on disaster Malaysian "Boeing".
You can see that we leave in the report the elements, which, according to our critics, we would
like to remove -- the opinions of the ordinary residents of Donbass and search our film crew of
the place from which the missle was possibly launched (if it was a missile).
This material has been enriched by the fragments, which, in our opinion, it was lacked and that
gave the story the volume of the added context of the content of what people say, located in the
center of events. I mean the statement of the official representative of Kiev on that fateful
day over the area of the tragedy in the air was not Ukrainian military aircraft. And expert
opinion about how likely is the use by the military pilots of civil aircraft as a "flying shields".
BBC is not engaged in self-censorship, and expects that its journalists ask questions. Including
inconvenient for users.
In revising the plot we almost did not use scissors. The only item that was cut out, is the statement
of the head of counter-intelligence of the security service of Ukraine Vitaly Nayda. Because it
was not about what Olga investigated . But interviews of Nayda on our site left -
Click here.
The history of the downed airliner extremely complex and multifaceted, and we cover it from
different sides.
To make mistakes is painful and unpleasant. But doing them, we recognize. And in this case we apologized
not once, but twice: first, that the original report was published in haste; secondly, because we
have not explained to you why it was removed once we made this decision.
And then we have tried these errors be corrected in a transparent manner. I'm not sure there's
a lot of media that are ready to do the same.
P.S. After the publication of my blog on Thursday, we received a huge number of comments. I am
very pleased how attentively you read our site and thank everybody who voted. Some of you have asked
where you can read the statement about mentioned editorial values BBC.
Here they are in English; Click
and
here they are in Russian.
Selected Comments
VS, 25 July 2014 - 19:40 GMT
Why continue this hypocritical blabbing. Everything is already clear to everybody
Yuri, 25 July 2014 - 21:43 GMT
Sawed-off is a part of the story were the locals testify in favor of the official version
of the Russian Federation. Censorship in action.
Vasily, 25 July 2014 - 21:57 GMT
You have rather poor military aviation expert.
The maximum speed of the SU-25 : 950 km/h (with norms. combat load)
Cruising speed: 750 km/h
Speed of the passenger airliner about 800 km/H.
that mean that have approximately the same speed.
A system mix up during a Ukrainian air defense units' rocket launch exercise could be the cause
of the Malaysia Airlines crash in southeast Ukraine, a source from one of the Ukrainian defense
departments told RIA Novosti.
"On July 17 the commanding officer of 156th Anti-Aircraft Regiment was instructed to conduct
a training exercise of ground troops stationed near Donetsk, which involved deploying the troops,
and carrying out a routine tracking and destroying of targets with the Buk-M1 missile," the source
said.
The source added that the actual launch of the rockets was not intended.
Two Sukhoi Su-25 combat aircraft on a reconnaissance mission participated in the exercise. It
is likely at some point, the routes of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 and a Su-25 jet overlapped.
Despite flying at different levels, they became a single dot on the radar of the missile system.
Of the two, the system automatically chose a larger target.
The reasons for the actual missile launch taking place remain unknown and are still under investigation,
as practical exercises with the Buk missiles has been prohibited since 2001, when a Russian Tu-154
passenger airplane en route from Novosibirsk to Tel Aviv was shot down by the Ukrainian military.
At the moment, an international team of 24 experts is investigating the plane crash. The B777-200
aircraft had a clean maintenance record and was last checked on July 11 at Malaysia Airlines' hangar
at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 heading from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed on July 17 near
the city of Donetsk in Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. Kiev placed the blame on the independence
supporters in eastern Ukraine for shooting the plane down, but the latter insisted they did not
have the means to shoot down an aircraft flying at 32,000 feet.
Moscow insists documents that show Russians armed the separatists who shot down Malaysia Airlines
plane are forged
The west is imposing "illegal, unreasonable and counter-productive" sanctions against Russia
based on internet forgeries that do not prove any of its missiles shot down the Malaysian airliner,
the Russian ambassador to London has said.
Shortly before the European Union announced further sanctions against individuals and businesses
linked to the Kremlin on Thursday night, Alexander Yakovenko condemned the trade restrictions that
have already been imposed and warned that any more "may well trigger a long anticipated endgame
of the present global crisis".
The EU agreed at a meeting on Thursday to add 15 people and 18 companies or other organisations
to the bloc's sanctions list for undermining Ukraine's territorial integrity, diplomats said. But
they failed to reach agreement on economic sanctions and will resume discussions on Friday, they
added.
Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, has joined the US and Ukraine in saying there is strong
reason to believe the Malaysian airliner was shot down by pro-Putin separatists using a Soviet-era
Russian-made Buk missile, killing 298 people.
On Thursday night, the US state department said it had evidence Russia intended to deliver "heavier
and more powerful" rocket launchers to separatists in Ukraine.
However, Yakovenko said Russia had never given weapons to the separatists.
"The ample proof of inconsistencies of the initial narrative by Kiev and Washington has been
provided by the closed briefing by the American intelligence officials on Tuesday," he told journalists
at the Russian embassy in London.
"I took this from British media. Given media reports, there was nothing convincing, not to say
compelling, in those materials.
"The case, as is admitted, is built upon photos and messages from social media sites, placed
by Ukrainian authorities and since then proved to be forgeries, as ambassador Churkin demonstrated
at the UN security council meeting. Naturally, our American partners say that they have no way of
certifying the authenticity of those materials."
He added: "What we do is providing humanitarian assistance and receiving refugees from Ukraine
in our territory. I don't have to say that people in Russia entertain strong feelings over the atrocities
committed today by the Ukrainian forces against civilians, their ruthless use of heavy weapons and
air force to shell and bomb [a] peaceful population."
The ambassador said the war in Ukraine had created "murky waters which are a fertile ground for
all sorts of incidents".
The separatists are continuing to hold the site of the accident, but the black boxes from the
plane and some of the bodies of those who died in the crash have now been released.
Yakovenko's warnings came after Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, suggested sanctions should
only be directed at people in the entourage of Putin, rather than Russian business in general. He
also warned people not to "lash out" against all Russians.
Johnson previously expressed unease about being asked to play tennis with the wife of a former
finance minister of Putin, along with David Cameron, in return for a £160,000 donation. However,
he claimed sufficient checks on the donor have now been carried out to satisfy him that the couple
are not "buddies" of Putin.
"We have got to target the people who really count in Vladimir Putin's immediate entourage, in
his regime, the people who are this cronies," Johnson told LBC 97.3.
"That's sensible. People say this will affect London, [that] it will do damage [but] I don't
believe it will, because what people will see is a city that knows the difference between right
and wrong. I think it is to the credit of Britain and to London that we are able to do these difficult
things.
"I would stress obviously this is not the context for a general lashing out against all Russians,
everybody who happens to speak Russian. This is a city that welcomes people from all around the
world and there are many Russians here in London who are by no means buddies of Vladimir Putin."
The mayor's defence of the tennis match comes after the Conservatives were put under scrutiny
over hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations from Russians, who Labour said were bankrolling
their general election campaign.
An analysis by the Guardian shows more than £161,000 has come from donors with links to the Kremlin's
business interests in the last five years.
It also emerged that one of Cameron's trade envoys, Charles Hendry, is president of a pro-Russia
business lobby group whose advisory council includes an ally of Putin who recently struck an oil
deal with Syria's Bashar al-Assad, and a former chief of the arms company that designed Buk missiles.
The UK and some eastern European countries have been pushing for sanctions not just on individuals
and businesses linked to Putin's regime but for some wider sectoral restrictions that could hit
trade in areas such as energy, defence and finance. The list of individuals who face sanctions announced
on Thursday is likely to be published on Friday or Saturday.
We have already seen
Mark Sleboda vs a typical BBC Presstitute, today I bring you Peter Lavelle vs a typical CNN
Presstitute. I have to admit that I have been loathing the Ziomedia for many years and it has been
close to 20 years since I tossed away my TV, stopped reading the papers, stopped listening to Neocon
Public Radio and basically fully switched to the Internet for news and entertainment. I never regretted
this decision and I still think that this is *the* necessary and unavoidable first step towards
personal liberation from system of mind control the plutocrats have imposed everywhere they had
a chance to.
I sincerely admire both Mark Sleboda and Peter Lavelle for their courage to try to
get at least a tiny little bit of truth across in their interviews, but I have to say that I also
think that their efforts are futile. I think that the zombies who watch the Idiot Tube in 2014 are
simply beyond hope, they have lost any capability to think, reason, analyze, or question. As Roger
Waters put it so well: "But it was only a fantasy, The wall was too high as you can see, No matter
how he tried he could not break free, And the worms ate into his brain". We might as well call
them Cerebrum Numbing Network. See for yourself in the video below.
1. Immediately after the tragedy, the Ukrainian authorities, naturally, blamed it on the self-defense
forces. What are these
accusations
based on?
2. Can Kiev explain in detail how it uses
Buk missile
launchers in the conflict zone? And why were these systems
deployed there
in the first place, seeing as the self-defense forces don't have any planes?
3. Why are the Ukrainian authorities not doing anything to set up an
international commission?
When will such a commission begin its work?
4. Would the Ukrainian Armed Forces be willing to let international investigators see the inventory
of their air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles, including those used in SAM launchers?
5. Will the international commission have access to tracking data from reliable sources regarding
the movements of Ukrainian warplanes on the day of the tragedy?
6. Why did Ukrainian air traffic controllers allow the plane to
deviate from
the regular route to the north, towards "the anti-terrorist operation zone"?
7. Why was airspace over the warzone not
closed for civilian
flights, especially since the area was not entirely covered by radar navigation systems?
8. How can official Kiev comment on reports in the social media, allegedly by a Spanish air traffic
controller who works in Ukraine, that there were two Ukrainian military planes flying alongside
the Boeing 777 over Ukrainian territory?
9. Why did Ukraine's Security Service start working with the recordings of communications between
Ukrainian air traffic controllers and the Boeing crew and with the data storage systems from Ukrainian
radars without waiting for international investigators?
10. What lessons has Ukraine learned from a
similar incident
in 2001, when a Russian Tu-154 crashed into the Black Sea? Back then, the Ukrainian authorities
denied any involvement on the part of Ukraine's Armed Forces until irrefutable evidence proved official
Kiev to be guilty.
Washington's propaganda machine is in such high gear that we are in danger of losing
the facts that we do have.
One fact is that the separatists do not have the expensive Buk anti-aircraft missile
system or the trained personnel to operate it.
Another fact is that the separatists have no incentive to shoot down an airliner and neither
does Russia. Anyone can tell the difference between low-flying attack aircraft and an airliner at
33,000 feet.
The Ukrainians do have Buk anti-aircraft missile systems, and a Buk battery was operational in
the region and deployed at a site from which it could have fired a missile at the airliner.
Just as the separatists and the Russian government have no incentive to shoot down an airliner,
neither does the Ukrainian government nor, one would think, even the crazed extreme Ukrainian nationalists
who have formed militias to take the fight against the separatists that the Ukrainian army is not
keen to undertake–unless there was a plan to frame Russia.
One Russian general familiar with the weapon system offered his opinion that it was a mistake
made by the Ukrainian military untrained in the weapon's use. The general said that although Ukraine
has a few of the weapons, Ukrainians have had no training in their use in the 23 years since Ukraine
separated from Russia. The general thinks it was an accident due to incompetence.
This explanation makes a certain amount of sense and far more sense than Washington's propaganda.
The problem with the general's explanation is that it does not explain why the Buk anti-aircraft
missile system was deployed near or in a separatist territory. The separatists have no aircraft.
It seems odd for Ukraine to have an expensive missile system in an area in which it is of no military
use and where the position could be overrun and captured by separatists.
As Washington, Kiev, and the presstitute media are committed to the propaganda that Putin did
it, we are not going to get any reliable information from the US media. We will have to
figure it out for ourselves.
One way to begin is to ask: Why was the missile system where it was? Why risk an expensive missile
system by deploying it in a conflict environment in which it is of no use? Incompetence is one answer,
and another is that the missile system did have an intended use.
What intended use? News reports and circumstantial evidence provide two answers. One is that
the ultra-nationalist extremists intended to bring down Putin's presidential airliner and confused
the Malaysian airliner with the Russian airliner.
The Interfax news agency citing anonymous sources, apparently air traffic controllers, reported
that the Malaysian airliner and Putin's airliner were traveling almost the identical route within
a few minutes of one another. Interfax quotes its source: "I can say that Putin's plane and the
Malaysian Boeing intersected at the same point and the same echelon. That was close to Warsaw on
330-m echelon at the height of 10,100 meters. The presidential jet was there at 16:21 Moscow time
and the Malaysian aircraft at 15:44 Moscow time. The contours of the aircrafts are similar, linear
dimensions are also very similar, as for the coloring, at a quite remote distance they are almost
identical."
I have not seen an official Russian denial, but according to news reports, the Russian government
in response to the Interfax news report said that Putin's presidential plane no longer flies the
Ukraine route since the outbreak of hostilities.
Before we take the denial at face value, we need to be aware that the implication that Ukraine
attempted to assassinate the president of Russia implies war, which Russia wants to avoid. It also
implies Washington's complicity as it is highly unlikely that Washington's puppet in Kiev would
risk such a dangerous act without Washington's backing. The Russian government, being intelligent
and rational, would obviously deny reports of an attempted assassination of the Russian president
by Washington and its Kiev puppet. Otherwise, Russia has to do something about it, and that means
war.
The second explanation is that the extremists who operate outside the official Ukrainian military,
hatched a plot to down an airliner in order to cast the blame on Russia. If such a plot occurred,
it likely originated with the CIA or some operative arm of Washington and was intended to force
the EU to cease resisting Washington's sanctions against Russia and to break off Europe's valuable
economic relationships with Russia. Washington is frustrated that its sanctions are unilateral,
unsupported by its NATO puppets or any other countries in the world except possibly the lap-dog
British PM.
There is considerable circumstantial evidence in support of this second explanation. There is
the youtube video which purports to be a conversation between a Russian general and separatists
who are discussing having mistakenly brought down a civilian airliner. According to reports, expert
examination of the code in the video reveal that it was made the day before the airliner was
hit.
Another problem with the video is that whereas we could say that separatists conceivably could
confuse an airliner at 33,000 feet with a military attack plane, the Russian military would not.
The only conclusion is that by involving the Russian military, the video doubly discredited itself.
The circumstantial evidence easiest for non-technical people to understand is the on cue
news programs organized to put the blame on Russia prior to the knowledge of any facts.
In my previous article
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/07/17/sanctions-airliners-paul-craig-roberts/ I reported
on the BBC news report which I heard and which was obviously primed to place all blame on Russia.
The program ended with a BBC correspondent breathlessly reporting that he has just seen the youtube
video and that the video is the smoking gun that proved Russia did it. There is no longer any doubt,
he said. Somehow the information got on a video and on youtube before it reached the Ukrainian government
or Washington.
The evidence that Putin did it is a video made prior to the attack on the airliner. The entire
BBC report aired over National Public Radio was orchestrated for the sole purpose of establishing
prior to any evidence that Russia was responsible.
Indeed the entire Western media spoke as one: Russia did it. And the presstitutes are still speaking
the same way.
Possibly, this uniform opinion merely reflects the pavlovian training of the Western media to
automatically line up with Washington. No media source wants to be subject to criticism for being
unamerican or to find itself isolated by majority opinion, which carries the day, and earn black
marks for being wrong. As a former journalist for, and contributor to, America's most important
news publications, I know how this works.
On the other hand, if we discount the pavlovian conditioning, the only conclusion is that the
entire news cycle pertaining to the downing of the Malaysian airliner is orchestrated in order to
lay the blame on Putin.
Romesh Ratnesar, deputy editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, provides convincing evidence for orchestration
in his own remarks of July 17.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-17/the-malaysia-airlines-shootdown-spells-disaster-for-putin?campaign_id=DN071814
Ratnesar's opinion title is: "The Malaysia Airlines Shootdown Spells Disaster for Putin." Ratnesar
does not mean that Putin is being framed-up. He means that prior to Putin having the Malaysian airliner
shot down, "to the vast majority of Americans, Russia's meddling in Ukraine has largely seemed of
peripheral importance to U.S. interests. That calculus has changed. . . . It may take months, even
years, but Putin's recklessness is bound to catch up to him. When it does, the downing of MH 17
may be seen as the beginning of his undoing."
As a former Wall Street Journal editor, anyone who handed me a piece of shit like Ratnesar published
would have been fired. Look at the insinuations when there is no evidence to support them. Look
at the lie that Washington's coup is "Russia's meddling in Ukraine." What we are witnessing is the
total corruption of Western journalism by Washington's imperial agenda. Journalists have to get
on board with the lies or get run over.
Look around for still honest journalists. Who are they? Glenn Greenwald, who is under constant
attack by his fellow journalists, all of whom are whores. Who else can you think of? Julian Assange,
locked away in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London on Washington's orders. The British puppet government
won't permit free transit to Assange to take up his asylum in Ecuador. The last country that did
this was the Soviet Union, which required its Hungarian puppet to keep Cardinal Mindszenty interred
in the US Embassy in Budapest for 15 years from 1956 until 1971. Mindszenty was granted political
asylum by the United States, but Hungary, on Soviet orders, would not honor his asylum, just as
Washington's British puppet, on Washington's orders, will not honor Assange's asylum.
If we are honest and have the strength to face reality, we will realize that the Soviet Union
did not collapse. It simply moved, along with Mao and Pol Pot, to Washington and London.
The flaw in Putin's diplomacy is that Putin's diplomacy relies on good will and on truth prevailing.
However, the West has no good will, and Washington is not interested in truth prevailing but
in Washington prevailing. What Putin confronts is not reasonable "partners," but a propaganda
ministry aimed at him.
I understand Putin's strategy, which contrasts Russian reasonableness with Washington's threats,
but it is a risky bet. Europe has long been a part of Washington, and there are no Europeans in
power who have the vision needed to separate Europe from Washington. Moreover, European leaders
are paid large sums of money to serve Washington. One year out of office and Tony Blair was worth
$50 million dollars.
After the disasters that Europeans have experienced, it is unlikely that European leaders think
of anything other than a comfortable existence for themselves. That existence is best obtained by
serving Washington. As the successful extortion of Greece by banks proves, European people are powerless.
Washington's propaganda assault against Russia is a double tragedy, because it has diverted attention
from Israel's latest atrocity against the Palestinians locked up in the Gaza Ghetto. Israel claims
that its air attack and invasion of Gaza is merely Israel's attempt to find and close the alleged
tunnels through which Palestinian terrorists pour into Israel inflicting carnage. Of course there
are no tunnels and no terrorist carnage in Israel.
One might think that at least one journalist somewhere in the American media would ask why bombing
hospitals and civilian housing closes underground tunnels into Israel. But that is too much to ask
of the whores that comprise the US media.
Expect even less from the US Congress. Both the House and Senate have passed resolutions supporting
Israel's slaughter of Palestinians. Two Republicans–the despicable Lindsey Graham and the disappointing
Rand Paul–and two democrats–Bob Menendez and Ben Cardin–sponsored the Senate resolution backing
Israel's premeditated murder of Palestinian women and children. The resolution passed the "exceptional
and indispensable" people's Senate unanimously.
As a reward for its policy of genocide, the Obama regime is immediately transferring $429 million
of US taxpayers' money to Israel to pay for the slaughter.
Contrast the US government's support for Israel's war crimes with the propaganda onslaught against
Russia based on lies. We are living all over again "Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction,"
"Assad's use of chemical weapons," "Iranian nukes."
Washington has lied for so long that it can't do anything else.
With the rabbit hole of conspiracies getting deeper by the hour, video has emerged showing
what appears to be the "black box" flight data recorder from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 being
taken from the crash scene. As
NBC reports, the men in the video are wearing Ukrainian Emergency Ministry uniforms, but a senior
Ukrainian official told a news conference Sunday that rebels had taken the black boxes. This fits
with reports from The Hill that pro-Russian separatists have located the black boxes for
the downed Malaysia Airlines passenger jet and will hand them over to international authorities,
according to separatist leader Alexander
Borodai. With the US having offered more "proof" that Russia was involved, perhaps some facts
from the Black Box will help clarify details in this dreadful situation... though we are not confident.
On our planet there are only two countries that once was mistakenly shot down a civilian airliner.
These countries - Ukraine and the USA.
Americans in 1988 was shot down over the Persian Gulf by Iranian A300 (killing 290 people, including
66 children). Ukrainians in 2001 was shot down over the Black sea Russian Tu-154 (killed 66 people).
Civil airliner was shot down and the USSR, but it was not in error, and consciously. Although the
incident 1983 also interesting in the context of what happened in Ukraine.
The fact that the flight MAS17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur used to fly on a different route.
14-th and 15-th he was flying through the Mykolaiv and Kherson regions. 16 he was flying just North
- through the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. But on July 17, the day of the disaster,
he somehow flew moreover that in Donetsk region, but also directly through the territory of the
control of Kiev. The deviation from normal of course (I think the same courses on 14 and 15 July
and earlier) constituted about 450 km.
Somehow it up trouble like the South Korean Boeing KAL007, who also leaned on his usual route
of 500 km And relations between the USSR and the USA were approximately in the same state as it
is now. The disaster has only exacerbated the crisis, and who knows, as if he were permitted if
after six months had not died Andropov.
But human beings are learning. And if the story of a South Korean airliner provocation, apparently,
was not, why not to use it as a model for future provocations.
So, what is suspicious:
First, the dramatically changed flight plan of the aircraft.
Secondly, that fact that the same airline in March already lost a plane over the Indian
ocean, whose fate is still unknown.
Third, the apparent readiness of the Kiev authorities to such an accident.
The last point requires more detailed disclosures.
When an airliner is flying at an altitude of 10 km with the speed of 900 km/h, it is not possible
to shoot it down using Igla shoulder based anti-aircraft missile, using which the militia had shot
down helicopters with the Ukrainian military. It can shoot down only from more serious weapon. For
example, using Buk". Several countries have this system. For example, Ukraine. In 2008 Ukrainians
supplied Ukrainians "Buk" to Georgians and they shoot down Russian tactical reconnaissance aircraft
Tu-MR.
And now, about half an hour before the loss of communication with Boeing, the Secretary of the
Ukrainian national security and defense Council Andrei Lysenko declared that Donetsk militants obtained
BUK system.
In the news reel of "Ukrainian Pravda" headers are really close:
17.26 - the NSDC declares about the "Buk",
17.49 - passenger aircraft was shot down in the Donetsk region.
But the tricky detail is the militia acquired the "Buck" system not yesterday and not even the
same week. The first message that militants occupied the air defense unit And-1402 with "BUK", was
published... 29 June! Why then Strelkov's people did not hit by any plane at high altitude since
then? After all, they are there were quite a few plane bombing of Donetsk during this period!
The fact that passenger plane flied over Donetsk region all the time is the second problem. Ukrainian
aviation authorities closed the zone of military actions for flights, but only to the height of
7.9 thousand meters. If the Ukrainian authorities knew that the militia captured "BUK" system, -
why don't they did not declare this region the no-fly zone?
Another suspicious fact is that almost immediately after the appearance of the news about the
crashed plane Internet is filled with the statements of Ukrainian officials. Poroshenko declared
the disaster to be a terrorist attack. Adviser to the head of MIA of Ukraine Zoryan Shkiriak urged
NATO to launch a ground military operation in the Donetsk region. Ukrainian propaganda Twitter accounts
began to spread false statement of CNN that the Pentagon is sure that the plane was shot down by
a missile launched from the territory of Russia.
Appeared ridiculous assertion that actually wanted to shoot down the plane of President Putin,
as his plane two has at the center of the fuselage a three-color strip. Such a striped is pretty
difficult to see from the earth, you know, and the fact that the Boeing 777 has just two engines,
and Il-96 - four, is known to almost everybody, including probably some children. Not to mention
the fact that no Board № 1 has never get close to the war zone.
Instantly, pictures are started to be transmitted from the place of the crash. And some of them
were probably not genuine such as the picture of a baby (more like a doll) and a passport of one
of the passengers - a brand new, with no traces of any use. And this is even before any locals arrived
to the accident site.
And on the YouTube soon appeared a record of record of intercepted by SBU discussion of leader
of self-defense Gorlovka Igor Besler and GRU Colonel Vladimir Garanin. Butler reports to Garanin
that he shot down the plane. Journalist Ilya Barabanov called Colonel Garanin, and he was very surprised
and said that he never discussed anything with Besler.
Soon the entry was removed and posted again with a different dialogue between two people claling
themselves the Major and the Greek. The Mayor says that the plane was shot "the Cossacks on Chernukhino
stand". Leave it to SBU the invention of the new type of Cossacks who can handle the Buk anti-aircraft
system and focus on the audio file recording this conversation was created... 16 July. That is,
or it it is a question about another plane, or is it a pre-prepared information to support this
provocation.
Of course, there are questions about the other side. These questions mainly concern the mysterious
An-26, allegedly downed militias around the same time, when Boeing fell. This was written in Twitter
Igor Strelkov - and this An-26 was never found, and the message was later erased. But the thing
is that nobody knows exactly who publishes news in this Twitter account.
It is known only, that this person is not Strelkov himself.
And still it is known that on July 13, the representative of the militia Ruslan Taskaev stated
that the only captured "Buk" is non-functional (Prosecutor General of Ukraine declared that nothing
has ever captured at all). And how it is known that in the North-Western outskirts of Donetsk Ukranian
Army deployed divisions 156-th of anti-aircraft missile regiment of Armed forces of Ukraine which
include 27 launchers of the complex "Buk-M1". Well, we now know who became the scapegoat for the
shooting instread.
Further reading: http://izvestia.ru/news/574041#ixzz38269wGy3
Larry Wilkerson: Why weren't commercial flights banned over an area where aircraft had already
been shot down? - July 20, 14
WILKERSON: I don't know what the response is going to be ultimately. The response so far,
I think, has been fairly cool, calm, and calculated.
JAY: You're talking about the official response from Obama.
WILKERSON: Yes, yes. I don't count John McCain as anything other than a raving maniac
anymore. Listening to him makes me understand viscerally and deeply and profoundly what's wrong
with the U.S. Congress.
JAY: The response of Obama, though, essentially is saying this is Russia's fault. Russia,
Putin replied or responded by saying this is the Ukrainian government's fault. Essentially I don't
think from what I saw of Putin--he's not denying that it might be Russian separatists that fired
the missile, but he's saying they're in that situation of firing missiles because Ukraine, the Ukrainian
government, stepped up their campaign against the separatists. What do you make of this back-and-fourth?
WILKERSON: I think it's typical of what happens when great powers contend with one another
over a middling power or lesser power's territory. I think it's everybody's fault. It's particularly
an egregious case of lack of responsibility of the ICAO, the International Civil Aviation Organization,
who should have put out notice to airmen and other precautionary notices about flying in this area.
It's not like this is the first plane that's been shot down at some altitude. A transport was shot
down, I think, at something like 6,000 meters. That's pretty high. That means an SA-11 or even better.
So I think the first blame here goes to the organization that's supposed to keep civilian airliners
out of conflict zones like this. And then the rest of the blame, the ultimate blame, the fundamental
blame goes to all parties--the United States, Ukraine, the Russians--for not coming to some kind
of negotiated political solution to what is a cancerous problem right there in the heart of what
we used to call in the old days the continental landmass that's so important to the rest of the
world.
JAY: Now, the response from a lot of leaders around the world and a lot of the press around
the world, it's not all that far from McCain's outrage. They're not, perhaps, calling for such aggressive
measures against Russia as McCain is, but clearly if this is what they're describing as pro-Russian
separatists--I'm not even sure that's the right label for them, but at any rate, if it turns out
it is them, I don't think anyone would suggest they would deliberately target a passenger aircraft.
The American Navy, I believe it was, shot down an Iranian aircraft in 1988 that killed almost exactly
the same member number of people--298 people were killed. And that was not described in the West
as an act of terrorism, while this one is.
WILKERSON: Yes, we're probably, possibly, the biggest hypocrites on the face of the
earth. In 1988, after we'd taken Iraq's side almost wholesalely in the Persian Gulf in a very
brutal and bloody war between Iraq and Iran--a war, I might add, Iraq started, then sends an Aegis
cruiser on patrol in the Gulf, and having come under some fire, as I recall, immediately prior to
the shoot-down, had a few seconds to react [at the] combat center and reacted and shot down an Iranian
Airbus and killed--my recollection was 290 people. And that act caused Ayatollah Khomeini to, as
he said himself later, throw in the towel and agree to a ceasefire and end that brutal war, which
had, I think, gone on for about eight years at that point. So the United States wastes no opportunity
to be hypocritical.
JAY: Now, the critique of the Russians in this specifically about this event is why are
they giving such missiles to the separatists and why are they getting so involved in militarily
supporting them. What do you make of that critique?
WILKERSON: I think it's a sound critique as far as it goes. I suspect that with John McCain
ranting and raving, and others like him who are not quite as outspoken as he, that we're probably
doing similar things and are planning on doing more, just as we've done in other places around the
world.
So what we need to do, Putin, the European Union, and United States, and Ukrainians of any type,
separatist or in the East, West, Crimea, Odessa, or wherever, is stop this business of killing one
another and seek a political solution to the problem. I've said before, we need to have a neutral
Ukraine, neither aligned with Russian nor the United States nor the European Union, a Ukraine that
nonetheless is helped by all three to become more stable, politically and economically, and a Ukraine
that is not coveted by anyone.
Now, the proximity of Ukraine to Russia certainly means that its relationship with Russia
is going to be a lot closer and more intimate than it is, possibly, with others, particularly that
portion in Ukraine that is Russian. And a lot of Russian military industry is in Ukraine. You can't
tell Putin that he can't have that industry. It would take years to relocate that industry into
Russia proper. So there are all sorts of complexities here that need to be taken care of. But they
can be taken care of if people will quit fighting.
JAY: Now, you describe McCain as a madman, but to what extent does he represent a significant
opinion in the professional foreign-policy or, perhaps more so, the military-industrial complex?
He seemed to have a fair amount of support. As I say, when he ran in 2008, he was gung ho about
this contention with Russia. A lot of people want this new Cold War.
WILKERSON: I don't think a lot of people do. I think a certain number of people do. And you named
some of them--Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Grumman, and others who sell weapons and want to sell more.
McCain is--while I might call him a madman--and lately, lately John McCain looks just like that--he's--nonetheless
comes from the warp and woof of this country. He comes from the very fabric of this country. Go
back and look at the Mexican War, which Lincoln decried from the House of Representatives and the
president and others were screaming for because they wanted to extend slavery and Texas promised
to be a slave territory. Go back and look at the Spanish-American war, when the Hearst press,
the yellow press, so-called, was screaming and yelling about Spain and about the need for the United
States to do what it needed to do in Cuba and the Philippines. Go back and look at those times and
you'll find lots of John McCains around those times. That's not to excuse them or to say they're
right; that's to condemn them, in my mind, and say they're wrong. But they're there, and they're
very American in that sense.
JAY: So, Larry, how dangerous a moment is this?
WILKERSON: It's a dangerous moment, Paul. I won't equivocate on that, especially if we let the
John McCains rule our minds. Then we begin to think that we have to, say, arm the other side, as
it were, equal to what Putin's doing with the separatists.
But I think cooler heads will prevail here--I hope they will. And I hope we'll investigate
this, we'll find out who did it. Blame will be assigned accordingly. And it's an accident. I hope
then the ICAO will put out the necessary /ˈnoʊtəmz/. This is a very--I understand, very heavily
traveled route. We'll get the civilian airliners away until we've got a political solution on the
ground, and we won't have any more shot-down and innocently killed people.
It is a dangerous moment, but it's not one that can't be handled it cooler heads prevail. And
I think I've seen of late with regard to these kind of things that the White House has a pretty
cool head. I hope that is sustainable.
JAY: Alright. Thanks for joining us, Larry.
WILKERSON: Thanks for having me.
Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired United States Army soldier and former chief of staff to United
States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson is an adjunct professor at the College of William
& Mary where he teaches courses on US national security. He also instructs a senior seminar in the
Honors Department at the George Washington University entitled "National Security Decision Making."
Hello all,
It's a very long time since I commented as I don't regularly follow the happenings within Russia
that much nowadays. It's unfortunate that my country lost another civilian aircraft yet again.
I just want to say that Putin already lost the propaganda war – in my country and most of
the world. CNN, BBC, Guardian etc. are just too influential and deemed 'impartial' by most people
in my country. If you ask me who shot the plane – I'd say wait for the conclusion of investigators
but I have a bad feeling that we will never know what really took place. To be honest, I am
inclined to think the 'pro-Russian rebels' mistakenly shot the plane although I would not be
surprised if it turned out the Ukrainian military did it. Whatever it is, Putin lost in this
propaganda war. No matter how, he is already considered a 'mass murderer' and responsible for
'the deaths of innocent people' in my country and in the eyes of most people of the world.
I think Putin made a mistake in not acting decisively on Eastern Ukraine. He should have
either left the pro-Russian rebels abandoned to their own devices or annexed Eastern Ukraine
and brave the wrath of the West. Now, the Western hawks are all behind Ukraine. I see Putin
has not much choice diplomatically Perhaps, a world war is looming – thanks to Western hawkish
stupidity.
It does seem like that but it is far from over. 'Winning' the propaganda war though is only
one side of the coin and the smoke hasn't even cleared yet.
A) Can the West effectively exploit this to its advantage in the Ukraine?
I don't see how this could work. What they've come up with is barely circumstantial and cannot
be constituted as a hanging offense for Russia. The coalescing (non political) view seems to
be that it was an accident. How far can you run with something like that?;
B) Lasting damage to Russia's reputation. Is this going to hit trade between Russia and non-Western
countries in the short term, let alone the medium to long term?
For capitalists, it is only a passing issue unless there is an actual war or sanctions become
serious. Both major businesses in the US and Europe have come out publicly against sanctions
that could seriously hit trade with Russia. Russia's ties with Asia and elsewhere are only but
expanding, where countries have the money to pay whist the West remain the economic sick men.
C) Will it change political relations significantly?
Neither Germany nor the Netherlands look like they are going to be bounced in to quick action
that follows the Washington/London line. The strategic issue of what to do with Russia has not
gone away and is simply much bigger than the current conflict in the Ukraine. At some time ground
rules will need to be negotiated between Russia and the EU, probably behind closed doors. Laying
in personally to Putin would be counter intuitive diplomatically. These countries still need
Russian 'help' or acquiescence in multiple problems around the world.
What if?
What if Kiev is pinned for this? It already has some blame for letting flights go over its airspace.*
It cannot be fully absolved in any case.
The damage would be immense and widespread, taking in NATO, trans-atlantic relations etc.
Simply walking away and saying it was a mistake and expecting everything to remain the same
will not be possible even if they try.
What happened is beyond horrible and there's plenty of disgust to spread around for those
milking it amorally for their own political purposes. Nothing has changed.
Al, you ask "what if Kiev is pinned for this?" No problem, it can be easily spun. Depending
on whether the US wants to keep Pork Chop, it can be spun a number of ways such as it was a
rogue unit or an attempted coup against Pork Chop and he and his cabinet knew nothing about
it, they were misled by elements within their own intelligence services. This is a god one since
the US then has the excuse to get involved in making Ukraine's intelligence services more 'professional'.
Alternatively, if Pork Chop is for the chop so to speak, it can be described as sheer incompetence,
the Ukrainian government were all for putting their hands up to it but Pork Chop overruled them
and so he has to go. Or even it was done by a Ukrainian unit that had been tortured by the rebels
and were suffering from PTSD and worthy of our sympathy and understanding.
The West has had decades of experience at this sort of thing. And the MSM will follow the
party line like a flock of starlings without any apparent awareness that they were flying in
one direction and are now flying in the opposite one.
I'm not so sure Fern. Such spinnings may have worked very well in the past but us general
voting cattle are no longer related to the brass monkeys of old.
We see this reflected more and more in comments sections of news items where more and more
people say "Well how is this different from anything we/our government do/does?"). This view
is in part driven by disappointment by the failings of our own governments and seeing decisive
leaders in action (Putin), i.e. the grass is greener on the other side syndrome, but this is
still people actively making this view public, not some anonymous passive poll taking with the
usual fixed or leading questions.
The complete contradictions become harder and harder to ignore and are amplified when our
media simply ignore them and other basic questions you would expect even the greenest of journalists
to ask.
Sure, most people do not spend obsessive amounts of time on public forums picking over everything,
but the method is clearly repeated over and over and over again. Memory can be refreshed by
a simple internet search.
I think that finally public consciousness has caught up with the cynical and amoral games
our leaders have been playing since time immemorial and also might have something to do with
the recognition of the West's current and relative diminishing of its global powers. We've all
become extremely cynical.
As for the rest of the world, I see similar cynicism yet more hope for the future.
These are extraordinary times we are living in and it is really difficult to look at ongoing
events with an impartial perspective even if you try, but at least us commenters here on Mark's
blog recognize this.
Along those lines, I did notice a subtle shift in Western MSM coverage starting today.
The comments gently chiding Ukraine about its aviation "negligence", and such-like.
Is the start of a walking-back and preparation of mass lemming consciousness for the
"revelation" that Ukes might have accidentally shot the missile?
Fingers crossed. Although a 'no conclusive evidence, truth may never be known, all Russia's
fault for annexing Danzig' cop-out is more likely than an outright admission of possible
Uke fault.
Is probably true that the West "won the propaganda war".
Which would be the case if people around the world are stupid enough to regard channels like
the "BBC" and "CNN" as dispassionate, objective sources (as opposed to mouthpieces for their
respective governments).
In which case, if Russia already lost the propaganda war, then it is all the more urgent
that the Rebels win the "real war".
The one on the ground.
In which case, Russia needs to start arming and supporting the Rebs with all due urgency.
Otherwise, if Strelkov is right, the Rebels will be defeated, and then Russia will have lost
2 wars, both propaganda and actual.
And then, following such a defeat, Russia will also lose Crimea again and have to hand over
Crimea and the entire Black Sea to NATO.
.
(Channelling Karl here, but his dire predictions have been right about a lot of things….)
Does anyone else have a desire to just quit following the whole Ukraine mess and reading
Russia related articles in mainstream media? I think I am having this moment right now.
Russia is being attacked from all fronts in our (Finnish) mainstream media. Multiple articles
and op-eds are being written every day and the tone is getting more hateful and aggressive all
the time. Each story is being spun in favor of Kiev/West and against Russia. I'm certain that
Russia has never received this much of hatred and venom in Finland since the days of war.
Being a dissident in this environment is getting pretty hard. A few years ago there were
some Russia friendly commentators in news comment sections, but most of them have disappeared.
That mat at least partly be a result of censorship. In Helsingin Sanomat my messages are being
systematically censored. Some of the messages were published but were later deleted by the moderators.
I also created an account to a Finnish military forum called maanpuolustus.net. 100% of the
folks there were pro-West and pro-Kiev. I posted some Youtube videos about Kiev atrocities in
eastern Ukraine and my account was immediately banned.
The media of my country claims to be "free", but I feel like living in a media dictatorship
where only the "correct" and "patriotic" views are allowed. Being anti-Russian is part of the
Finnish patriotism. You cannot be a true Finnish patriot unless you either directly hate Russia
or pretend to be "concerned about human rights/democracy in Russia" and by that way conceal
your hatred behind these "concerns".
Reading the mainstream media only makes me angered and it is not healthy. It is a nice summer
so why should I ruin my mood with this? Trying to fight an anti-Russian propaganda in our media
is like trying to swim uphill. You are being either censored or banned, or you are being attacked
and blamed being a Kremlin troll.
Dear Karl:
For your psychological health, I would recommend just taking a rest from the news, at least
for a while. Go off somewhere, and enjoy your summer!
Life is too short to suffer when you don't have to.
Along the theme of "Forget the propaganda war, Rebels MUST win the Real War",
here is an opinion piece
by Boris Kagarlitsky, from yesterday. This is one of the best political analyses I have
seen, how this war in Ukraine relates to Russian politics.
PARTIAL TRANSLATION
At the beginning of July, Novorossiya was saved by a whisker. Having avoided he catastrophic
defeat that was prepared for it by "Fifth Column" in Donetsk as well as the "Sixth Column" in
Moscow [yalensis: I think he means, not so much the ineffectual White Ribbon types, as the neo-liberal
types who hang around the Kremlin), the Peoples Republics were able to deliver a strategic defeat
to the junta. From this point on, a turning point in the war is possible. But this depends not
only on what happens at the Front.
(...)
The shattering Igor Strelkov's grouping [in Slav'ansk] would have paved the way [for junta
troops to enter] Donetsk from 3 directions, without any threats to their flanks. This would
have pleased the Moscow liberals. But History decided otherwise. The reinforcing of Slav'ansk
and the bold actions of the Resistance prevented the triumphal march of the National Guard throug
Donbass. Thus was averted the junta's Plan B, which was based on the work of traitors. [yalensis:
Here, once again, I believe that Kagarlitsky has Kurgin'an in mind!] The main forces of the
Resistance were supposed to remain in place and continue to defend Slav'ansk, while at the same
time the "Fifth Column" was supposed to open the gates of Donetsk to the army of the "Punishers".
The city (Donetsk) did not have adequate reinforcements, and within the leadership of the DPR
sat some people who were loyal to Rinat Akhmetov. However, this Plan B collapsed at the beginning
of July, just as Plan A had collapsed at the beginning of June.
(…)
There is still no (decisive) break in the war. But it could happen, if the Novorossiya republics
can hold out until autumn(…) This doesn't fit in with the plans of the Kiev junta, nor with
the plans of certain very influential people in Moscow. These latter were shocked by the setback
to (Kiev's) latest plan. (…) Their shock at the planned "throwing of Novorossiya under the bus"
gave rise to these rude attacks, on the part of the conservatives, against Strelkov.(…)
The civil war in the Ukraine has exposed the crisis of Russian politics. All the hopes and
dreams of the (Russian) elites to avoid new conflicts with the EU and USA, have been shattered,
because internal problems of the Western countries push them into a fight against the Russian
government, and Russian capital [yalensis: "Capital" in the Marxist sense, not the capital of
a country]. The Kremlin's timid attempt to allow some integration of post-Soviet economies is
regarded by Brussels and Washington as an act of aggression, as a threat to the neo-liberal
order in Eurasia. And, moreover, the betrayal of Novorossiya by the "Sixth Column" would not
have changed a thing, except for the fact that USA and EU, taking advantage of this situation,
would have struck ever more blows against Russia. Because this is the only way they can secure
their hegemony.
The war in Ukraine has divided Russian society. It has divided both (traditional) "lefts"
and "rights" into proponents of reaction; versus those who want to see (a genuine) socio-economic
rebirth of the post-Soviet world. Those who support Novorossiya, regardless of their subjective
inclinations and prejudices, are objectively supporting a social republic, a union of peoples,
and an actual democracy (….) The people in power are also divided. But there, the struggle takes
on a secretive character. The opinions of the Russian oligarchy, and the balance between liberal
and non-liberal groupings within the government, as always remain the main obstacle for any
Kremlin attempts to defend (Russia's) national interests.
Yesterday the enemy cut the last main highway linking the Donetsk with Lugansk and, accordingly,
with Russia. Strong points of the enemy are now in the villages Beloye and Vesela Tarasovka.
Now ukry hastily buried in the ground several dozens of tanks and armored personnel carriers,
in order to exclude the possibility of breaking the defense.
... surrender of Tarasivka should be viewed in the operations scale as a strategic defeat!
Now we are cut off from the border - that is, from any supplies
At night the enemy went through the Tonenkoe to the airport of Donetsk, creating a network
of base stations, each of which is protected 5-7 tanks.
Just now three Su bombers hit Saur-grave with heavy bombs. The results are not known yet.
Boeing is used by Ukrow "to the fullest"... Aviation of ukrow dominates in the sky with impunity.
In the area of Grygorivka militia attacked the convoy of the enemy. The results are still
need evaluation.
Items presumed to be the data recorders from the crashed Malaysian plane have been found and delivered
to Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, according to the leader of the self-proclaimed People's Republic of
Donetsk.
"Aircraft parts looking like black boxes were found at the site of the plane crash.
They are currently in Donetsk, in the People's Republic's (DPR) government headquarters, under my
personal control," Aleksandr Boroday, the republic's prime minister, told reporters.
The self-defense forces are ready to hand the data recorders over to international monitors "in
case they arrive," he said.
Boroday said that the found items "cannot be given" to Kiev representatives since in
that case they could possibly damage them to "falsify the results [of the recordings]."
Another official for the DPR, Sergey Kavtaradze, said that what he thought were the flight recorders
looked undamaged on the outside. He added that since there are no aviation experts in the DPR, they
cannot be absolutely sure that the found items are the black boxes. The items will be passed to
the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) which will lead the investigation into the
crash of flight MH17.
The publicly offered evidence against everyone in the Malaysian Airlines MH17 crash remains as
it was yesterday,
sparse and of dubious trustworthiness. The rhetoric continues to pick up steam, however, with
assorted Western officials continuing to pronounce absolute certainty as to the official truth,
whatever it happens to be at any given time.
Broadly,
it centers on proclamations of the Ukrainian rebels' guilt, and Russian culpability, though the
narrative tends to be flexible, and yesterday's insistence of the rebels using a 9k37 Buk vehicle
seized from Ukraine's military has, without explanation, transitioned into the vehicles being provided
by Russia, of which
Ukraine
insists incontrovertible, though totally secret, proof.
The Obama Administration is similarly claiming evidence of rebel guilt, though their evidence
too is being withheld, likely in anticipation of further changes to the official story.
As the accusations fly fast and freely, another new question has emerged. If, as Ukraine claims,
it had so much proof of the rebels having such advanced anti-aircraft missiles, then
why was the claim never made publicly until nearly a day after the crash. Likewise, Ukraine's
claims of rebel shoot-downs of military aircraft in the leadup to the MH17 incident seem to be morphing,
as it was only hours before that incident that Ukraine was insisting Russia's Air Force was directly
behind the downing of their Su-25 warplanes.
The wreckage is still barely inspected, and Ukraine is
throwing around claims of a cover-up, perhaps anticipating that their allegations will not be
upheld when the evidence is examined.
But for most nations, particularly the US and other Western nations, the fallout of the incident
is something to be shopped around for diplomatic advantage, with officials
pushing Russia to forcibly end the east Ukrainian rebellion as some sort of payment for ending
the hysterical anti-Russia rhetoric surrounding the entire incident. Russia so far seems content
to hold out for actual evidence, but Western officials appear to believe it is a buyer's market,
and that the perception of guilt is the real problem for Russia, not whether it is upheld by weeks
of investigation.
At this time my provisional conclusion is that MH17 was shot down by an air
defense battery of the Ukrainian army, from Ukrainian territory, using an SA-17 Buk missile. I respectfully
associate myself with the statements of the Russian federal government on the issue.
My estimate is that a 9M317 single-stage, solid fueled missile was used, in semi-active homing
mode. The 317 uses a radar proximity fuse and a direct hit can probably be ruled out. That is to
say the warhead probably detonated away from the hull, perhaps as much as 50 feet away.
That is consistent with the eyewitness evidence, which is of the plane falling from the sky more
or less intact, and breaking apart on impact, and the tight debris field. Although there was a post-crash
fire most of the unfortunate victims seem to have died from negative G-forces whilst strapped into
their seats.
The fact that most passengers were strapped in suggests that Captain Leong had time to warn his
passengers of impending missile impact. There is some evidence that he took evasive maneuvers, correctly
diving the aircraft to increase speed and mitigate damage due to explosive decompression.
MH17's assigned altitude, by Ukrainian air traffic control, was FL330, or 33,000 feet. I suspect
that Captain Leong or his first officer saw the incoming and, as indicated, dived, so that interception
was at a lower altitude.
There is no evidence that the target fireballed at altitude, which rules out
a direct hit on the fuel tanks, although we may find some shrapnel damage.
The mainstream media, who are rushing to blame Russia, or pro-Russian separatists,
are showing typical aviation illiteracy, of the sort on display after MH370 was shot down. On
that occasion, as regular readers of this column will recall, they did not understand that aviation
fuel is light and evaporates. That basic technical deficiency led them to confuse the diesel
slick from the sunk Chinese SSK with fuel from the downed airliner.
On this occasion they are reporting at one and the same time, sometimes on the same page, that
the airliner was 'blown out of the sky' yet fell to the ground intact and broke apart on landing.
In the UK the Sun is leading the race to come up with the silliest reporting, with respect.
Its front page today was asinine. Its journalistic standards are in freefall to New York Times
levels.
If the stricken airliner did not fireball and had time to take evasive action, it also had
time to broadcast a Mayday message. The fact that it did not suggests that its radios were being
jammed. We will probably find that its ACARS reporting system failed as well, as with MH370.
I find it highly significant that there is a media blackout on the status on the ACARS system.
If the ACARS was disabled, or the radios were jammed, then the pro-Russian separatists
can safely be ruled out, although as I explain below they can be pretty much ruled out anyway, as
they lack the capability.
____________________
The SA-17
The SA-17, which also has a naval variant, originally entered Soviet service
in 1979, but it has been developed considerably since then, indeed the latest, SA-17, versions have
a different Pentagon classification.
It is fired from either a Transporter-Erector Launcher (TEL), with four missiles, or a Transport-Erector
Launcher And Radar (TELAR), which I think can carry up to six missiles, depending on version. It
is a highly capable system, in service with both the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces.
Some of the technology may have been transferred from the US during the Soviet period by DVD
assets in Washington. The SA-17 is similar to the excellent Standard missile, indeed it is sometimes
jokingly referred to as the "Standardski".
The distinction between the TEL and the TELAR is important, because it is being said that Russian
separatists captured a Buk launcher, although the evidence consists only of social media reports,
a dubious source of information at best. The evidence, such as it is, is equally consistent with
the Ukrainians setting the rebels up. The separatists themselves have strongly denied any high-altitude
interception capability.
The Buk represented a significant improvement over the SA-6 Gainful which preceded it. There
is no doubt that TELAR vehicles can both acquire and launch but significant doubt that a TEL on
its own has any target acquisition capability.
So far as I can tell a TEL is basically a launch on visual confirmation of target system, i.e.
pretty basic, rather like a shoulder-launched MANPAD. You see the target, point your missile in
its rough direction and shoot, relying on the missile's onboard target acquisition system (typically
infra-red with MANPADs and semi-active with the Buk) to achieve lock-on, hoping another target does
not get in the way.
The SA-17 is designed to be fired from a command vehicle, that is to say it is not so very different
from the SA-6, where you needed three vehicles (radar, command vehicle and launcher). There is not
the slightest evidence that the separatists acquired a command vehicle, indeed there is no reliable
evidence that they acquired a TELAR. The most they might have got – and I am not buying even that
– was a TEL.
If the most they have is a TEL then we can rule them out completely for a beyond
visual range engagement, as happened yesterday. Even if they had a TELAR there is no evidence
that they have anyone trained on the Buk. I do not buy the argument that it can be used by your
average separatist, many of them no brighter than the average journalist or MP (no offense intended),
without specialist training. There are no reports at all of the separatists having fired any
training rounds, i.e. if it was them they achieved a long-range kill first time they fired the
weapon. Not buying.
Missile speed for the 317 version is around Mach 4, giving Captain Leong no chance at all, given
that his radars were switched on and no one showed him my work on MH370. An SA-17 warhead is typically
around 70 kilos, or 154 pounds (there are different versions of the missile), enough to down a 777.
It's a big bird, around 18 feet long, weighing in at just over 1,500 pounds. It's large enough for
one of the pilots to have spotted its approach in broad daylight, given the good visibility. The
solid fuel rocket engine has a burn time of around 15 seconds and leaves a highly visible exhaust
trail.
The 317 has a range of about 27-28 miles. That is significant because MH17 was shot
down about 25 miles from the Russian frontier. That is getting close to the limit of system
capabilities for a launch from Russian territory. US intelligence sources are being quoted today
as saying that the missile was fired from within the Ukraine, which makes sense to me, and is
one of the reasons why I conclude, provisionally, that the Ukrainians were responsible.
______________________
Kiev Must Have Known It Was MH17
The next thing to note about the SA-17 is that it has a sophisticated phased-array
fire control radar, capable of target differentiation. Assuming, as I am prepared to assume, that
it was the Ukrainian army, then they must have known that it was MH17. A freely available phone
app was all they would have needed to tell them where the flight was.
The target was flying along a designated airway at a typical altitude for a civilian airliner,
probably with an active transponder until it was taken down after entering Ukrainian airspace. It
was not maneuvering, at least not until it saw the incoming, and could not conceivably have been
confused for a military aircraft, not least as it had been directed to the kill zone by Ukrainian
air traffic control.
____________________
Why MH17?
It seems that the motive was to discredit Russia, and that nice man President
Putin in particular. The Ukrainian attack on MH17 was obviously planned well in advance.
The preparations may have included fake entries on social media websites to the effect that the
rebels had acquired an SA-17 launcher. So far as is known there were no persons of interest on board
the plane, unlike MH370, save for the poor AIDS researchers.
It is wildly improbable that it is a coincidence that both shot down aircraft were Malaysian.
Someone is making a point. Malaysian Airlines are being taken down. If you have any frequent flyer
miles on Malaysian use them up now, preferably on a partner airline.
The Administration has also rounded on the Russians and the rebels. Its claim that the rebels
were to blame is obvious nonsense, which is unlikely to have been supported by professional intelligence
officers, who would have had access to pretty much the same ELINT as the Russians.
I entirely support Moscow's claim to be in possession of ELINT data indicating
that the target was painted by Ukrainian fire control radar, probably the organic fire control radar
of a Ukrainian SA-17 battery.
The total inability of the Administrationto give the co-ordinates of this
alleged rebel-controlled SA-17 launcher is telling. All that President Obama could say today was
that the missile was fired from within a rebel-held area.
That, with respect, is an obvious lie, since the NSA would have overheads, as well as the ELINT
data. If the attack genuinely came from a rebel-held area then you can bet your bottom dollar
the Administration would be handing out the evidence.
It is likely that the attack was cleared by Kiev in advance, high up the payroll, with both Berlin
and the White House. The FAA, which is penetrated and was implicated in helping to set up the Turkish
Airlines DC-10 Paris Air Disaster, seems to have helped in setting up the rebels as patsies. The
presence of only one US citizen on board carried obvious political attractions for the White House.
One must recall that the covert German DVD intelligence organisation has thoroughly penetrated
the Obama Administration, at a senior level, and is in effective control of the German federal government.
It is the world's only intelligence agency which regularly attacks commercial airliners.
The Russians have never knowingly shot down a civilian airliner on a designated airway. I leave
out of account KAL007 and the earlier KAL Boeing 707 incident, as those aircraft were well off course,
were intercepted at night and had violated Soviet airspace without authorisation.
There is no reason at all to suppose that the Soviet fighter pilots thought they
were attacking a Boeing 747, indeed there is no reliable evidence that KAL007 was even showing
her navigation lights. As I point out in Spyhunter there are unanswered questions about
that incident.
... ... ...
The Failure to Follow Up the MH370 Shoot Down
Those who suppressed my warnings from the aviation community now have blood
on their hands. Had poor Captain Leong known that the Bad Guys were deliberately firing long range
missiles at airliners using semi-active homing he would have known better than to cruise over contested
airspace with his radars turned on.
Had my advice, as given in Spyhunter and in this column after MH370 was shot down, been
followed, then this tragedy would not have happened. It is upsetting to see lives thrown away in
this casual manner.
At least my argument that airliners face high altitude missile threats, obvious from the time
we realised that the Iranians had shot down TWA800 with a Phoenix, may now be given greater weight.
Aviation security consultants have obsessed, dangerously, with MANPADS, which have a typical ceiling
of only 12-15,000 feet.
It is a pity that Malaysian Airlines did not consult me after 370. Almost alone amongst aviation
security experts I was alive to the high-altitude threat, indeed I am the only aviation intelligence
specialist in the world to have gone public on the high altitude missile threat to airliners.
I would have advised strongly against flying through contested Ukrainian airspace.
The FAA warnings and claims that the rebels had acquired a Buk would have been further red flags
for me.
There it is, sadly. The airline rejected my claim that MH370 was shot down, or accepted
it and participated in the cover-up, took no steps whatsoever to guard against the high altitude
missile threat and have now lost another 777, 295 people and probably the airline itself into
the bargain.
To get to levels of zerohedge paranoia ... wasn't there NATO exercises in the Black Sea that
have "successfully concluded" just um... yesterday? More shades of TWA 800. History is weird.
Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal (KLWCT) found former Israeli army general Amos Yaron
and the state of Israel guilty of crimes against humanity and genocide stemming from the massacre
of Palestinians in Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in 1982.
For the past two weeks, Malaysia has been strongly condemning Israel's aggression on Gaza.
...and, possibly, for the past two weeks, Israel's been thinking about how to punish Malaysia.
WASHINGTON -- President Obama said the United States has "increasing confidence" that the
missile that shot down a Malaysian jetliner came from Russian separatists in Ukraine -- and that
Russia bears some responsibility for the crisis.
"Evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile from an area that
is controlled by Russian backed separatists inside Ukraine," Obama said in his first extensive remarks
on the passenger jet crash. "A group of separatists can't shoot down military transport planes or,
they claim, fighter jets, without sophisticated military equipment, and that comes from Russia."
Yes. We are also not winning in Iraq, and that comes from Iran.
Obama noted that about a hundred AIDS researchers and activists were reportedly on the flight,
headed to a conference in Australia.
"These were men and women who dedicated their own lives to saving the lives of others, and they
were taken from us in a senseless act of violence," he said. "It's important for us to lift them
up and affirm their lives."
Do speechwriters just string together random crap to generate maximum pathos?
Not sure about the creation date in the mp4 meta data being such a great evidence. It's known
to be iffy at times and different from the actual file creation. But on the original research
page
at zerohedge.com it becomes clear the video was partly preexisting since June 5 in terms
of format, production and some imagery used. Very sloppy all in all, even if the creation date
would be a red herring, the odd production and timing is certainly not!
And the shoot-down coming on the day the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza began is a curious
coincidence- something spectacular to divert the low-information public's attention? I have
to wonder just how much you'd have to pay someone- say, in the Ukraine military- to target and
launch on a civilian airliner as part of a false-flag op?
In other important, world-shaking news, Kim Kardashian was seen today showing off her bottom.
How easily we're distracted from real issues these days.
How does Russia possibly benefit from this shoot down (cui bono?). This question was not
asked by Washington when they claimed that Assad used sarin gas on his own people, even though
he had nothing to gain and everything to lose. And, naturally, they are not asking it now. Washington
does not want its sheeple to think now, does it?
Pictures that got to the Internet today from the crash site suggest that the airliner was shot
not "BUK" surface to air missile but by air to air mille from those "unknown" two fighters, which
were mentioned in his blog "the Spanish air traffic controller" who work at Borispol airport in
Kiev.
"In anti-aircraft missiles have different type of warheads depending to the type of the rocket,
" explained to the newspaper one of the creators of the complex "Buk". - So from the wreckage it
is easy to determine what type of rocket surface to air or air to air was used".
For example, in the complex "Buk" use anti-aircraft missiles MM. Their speed - 850 meters per
second, a warhead weight of 70 kg. Warhead payload consists of are metal balls which when the warhead
is blow near the target create a dense cloud of balls rushing to target of high speed.
"When such balls hit the aircraft it inflicts a mass of different holes, " says the designer.
- In the fuselage they can be small, in the fuel tanks much bigger and it they get into the engine
that they "knock out" all the turbine blades".
Judging by photos of the remains of a Boeing 777, the expert concludes that the plane was shot
by aircraft air to air missile. In their military units not the balls but a beam of sharp metal
rods, sometimes welded together, sometimes not. For the set bundle of rods installed release charge
which is called the "fragmentation rod combat unit". When the warhead approaches the target at predetermined
distance the charge is explodes in the warhead and a bundle of rods on supersonic speeds rush to
the target.
After contact with the aircraft a rod just due to its huge kinetics energy is to pierce the plane
through thus destroying the internal structure of the aircraft, including electrical circuits and
vital avionics equipment. The speed of the rod is such that he can break apart even titanium spars
of the aircraft. If the target gets more then 2-3% of these arrows, the plane is completely doomed:
at speeds of 900 km per hours even small hole fuselage or a wing is fatal as air flow will destroy
the damaged part in less than a minute.
Such warheads are installed on two types of missiles R-73 and R-27. At first its mass is 7.4
kg, second - 40 kg. Fighters MiG-29 and su-27 are equipped with those missiles. Both machines take
an active part in the Ukrainian troops "anti-terrorist operation" in the South-East of the country.
As noted the designer of Buk:
" I am confident that from the photos that appeared in the Internet visible damage to
the skin of the airliner has characteristic of fragmentation rods, not a high-explosive ball-based
warhead, such as Buk".
Those pictures make the mysterious message "Spanish" Manager that Boeing 777 was accompanied
by two Ukrainian fighter (the militia there is no technique), and his assumption that after the
"visit" of these cars passenger liner disappeared from radar screens, less implausible. In this
situation the version of of the Federal air transport Agency saying that the attack on the Malaysian
Boeing could be an attempt to shoot down the plane of the President of Russia Vladimir Putin, who
was returning from Latin America, as their routes overlap, and the colors of the fuselage two aircraft
very similar.
In favor of this version speaks that fact, that in the place of supposed route of two aircraft
of the Ukrainian military in advance deployed a battery of anti-aircraft missile systems Buk and
put them on high alert, as evidenced by the data of the radio interceptions of the Russian military.
They also raised into the air two fighters. And the fact that militia has no aviation means tha
attack was performed by the Ukrainian side. Looks like the pilots of the Ukrainian air force were
unable to distinguish Malaysian Boeing 777 from Russian Il-96.
And it is easy to make such a mistake due to similarity of sizes and colors of the plane. Moreover
in 2001 the calculation of the Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile system S-200V easily identified a
Russian passenger Tu-154 as a missile target and hit it destroying the airliner with all people
aboard. Although on the radar screen targets are drastically distinct with different size of the
label, and on speed of flight.
And it is difficult to say something positive about the training of Ukrainian air force pilots.
The bombing of cities and towns of the South-East of Ukraine shows a very low level of training
of flying personnel of the air force. This is confirmed by the number of lost in battle helicopters
and planes.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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While
the US push Kiev eastwards to fight Washington's proxy war against Russia, the political and financial
situation in Kiev is rapidly falling apart. 
On
July 22nd, the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (photo, left)
was forced to change Kiev's story - a damage-control exercise to the overwhelming evidence against
Ukraine. He has since reversed this position.
Rupert
Murdoch's News Corporation newspaper , The Sun, always ready to take any pro-war
line to the extreme, led the 'conflict pornography' on news stands, intentionally inciting fear
and jingoism, doing what it always does: nudge British working class readers in a predetermined
direction and fuse public opinion among differing classes on divisive international issues. No surprise
then, as The Sun ran, "Putin's Missile" as its headline the next morning.
Similar covers and headlines were cloned across US and British media. Within hours of the news breaking
– and despite this blanket coverage, not one of these newspapers or TV broadcasters offered any
real evidence outside of anecdotal and wild speculation and conjectural theories. 
Russian
materials will be sent to the experts of the leading European countries and Malaysia.
Broadly,
it centers on proclamations of the Ukrainian rebels' guilt, and Russian culpability, though the
narrative tends to be flexible, and yesterday's insistence of the rebels using a 9k37 Buk vehicle
seized from Ukraine's military has, without explanation, transitioned into the vehicles being provided
by Russia, of which
