Malaysian Airline shot down by missile, Russians main suspects

A Malaysia Airlines passenger jet crashed and burned in eastern Ukraine on July 17 after being shot down by a missile in what President Petro Poroshenko called a terrorist act. All 295 people on board, including 280 passengers and 15 crew members, are presumed dead.

Security Services of Ukraine chief Valentyn Nalivaichenko, at a late night news conference, said the government is making all evidence in the investigation public, including intercepted phone calls between two members of the Russian military special services unit – known as the GRU – in which they discussed shooting down the airplane.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin denied any involvement, saying Ukraine is responsible. However, Ukrainian officials say the Kremlin-backed separatists evidently mistook the commercial aircraft for a Ukrainian military one in an area of fighting between the government and Russian-supported forces.

In the conversation, Nalivaichenko says that one Russian officer “who is a terrorist bastard” calls another, identified as Russian Col. Vasily Geranin, to report that subordinates who arrived on the crash scene discovered that it was a civilian airliner downed with lots of casualties. Other news reports from the scene in a field in Donetsk Oblast, near the city of Torez, suggest that Kremlin-backed separatists have seized the airline’s flight recorder, crucial to any investigation, and are taking it to Moscow.

Nalivaichenko said “our first task is to investigate who among the Russian commanders gave the order to shoot down the plane.”

The commercial Boeing 777 airlines was flying at an altiude of 10 kilometers – or 33,000 feet – when, according to the Interior Ministry, the plane was brought down by a ground-to-air missile.

Russian-backed separatist commander Igor Girkin, also known as Strelkov, initially claimed credit for the downing of a military transport airplane. He revised his statement later.

“We did warn you – do not fly in our sky,” he wrote on VK.com, Russia’s version of Facebook. Since the Ukrainian government doesn’t control the area where the plane crashed, heavy suspicion – especially in light of Nalivaichenko’s public release of intercepted conversations – falls on Russian military forces for carrying out the strike.

If proved, the murder of 295 civilians would almost surely bring a much swifter and stronger reaction from the West, including the United States and European Union, whose leaders have been reluctant to impose tough sanctions on Russia’s key economic sectors of finance, military and energy.

The 295 people aboard the plane possibly included 23 Americans and nine British citizens as well as 15 crew members.

U.S. President Barack Obama said on July 17 that “we are working to determine whether there were American citizens on board. That is our first priority….The U.S. will offer any assistance we can to determine what happened and why…our thoughts and prayers are with all the families of the passengers, wherever they call home.”

The flight departed at 12:14 p.m. from Amsterdam en route to Kuala Lumpur, and was reportedly shot down around 4:20 p.m.

Russian and Western journalists reported seeing mangled bodies and passports of American, Russian, Dutch and Malaysian citizens, among others, at the scorched crash site.

Poroshenko announced the government is launching an investigation into the incident, but called the event “a terrorist act.” He said Ukrainian forces had nothing to do with the plane crash. According to the anti-terrorist operation’s information center, Ukraine’s military aviation did not fly on July 17.

Malaysian President Mohd Najib Tun Razak tweeted: “I am shocked by reports that an MH plane crashed. We are launching an immediate investigation.”

The separatist leader Girkin initially claimed credit in a tweet that was later removed.

“The plane has just been taken down somewhere around Torez (Donetsk Oblast). It lays there behind the Progress mine. We did warn you – do not fly in our sky. And here is the video proving another ‘bird’ falling down. The bird went down behind the slagheap, not in the residential district. So no peaceful people were injured.”

Girkin is a Moscow native who, according to the Security Service of Ukraine, is a high-ranking officer in Russia’s military intelligence department.

It appears that, despite their denials, the Russian-backed separatists had weapons capable of downing a commercial flight at least 10 kilometers or 33,000 feet high. On June 29, representatives of Donetsk People’s Republic boasted that they took over a Ukrainian military base that had Buk long-range missiles.

The operational range of missiles fired by Buk is up to 25 kilometers, or 2.5 times the altitude at which the Malaysian plane flew.

Many airlines, including Air France, Aeroflot and British Airlines, said they will avoid Ukrainian airspace. An Interfax report said the plane came down 50 kilometers (or 20 miles) short of entering Russian airspace. It “began to drop, afterwards it was found burning on the ground on Ukrainian territory,” the unnamed source said.

In a telephone interview with Channel 5, a Torez resident said that when the plane spiraled down after being hit, “it looked like a cargo transport plane, and only later did we realize it was a passenger plane.”

Ukraine’s government forces and Russia-backed separatists continue to fight for control of the heavily industrialized population centers of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, home to 15 percent of Ukraine near the Russian border.

Two Ukrainian military planes were shot down in the area in the past few days. Ukraine’s government accuses Russia of complicity.

Story courtesy of KyivPost