Russia has released evidence from its satellite and radar images which ask serious questions about the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. The US, UK, Australia and other western governments have repeatedly accused Russia of everything from shooting down the airliner to supplying BUK systems to the independence fighters in Eastern Ukraine. One of the latest articles, in The Guardian no less, relates to a story released by Kiev that has been on the internet for days, accusing Russia of providing a BUK missile launcher which was allegedly passing through the town of Torez, close to the crash site with one of its missiles missing. But the Russian evidence tells a different story which would discount The Guardian report. What makes this particularly bad journalism from the Guardian's man in Torez, Shaun Walker, is that the Russian evidence was available at the time he penned the story.
At 27 minutes 30 seconds into this presentation this same video that Kiev apparently released is examined using a frame from the video and puts the town as being Krasnoarmeysk on Dneproetrovskaya Street according to a roadside advertisement about a car-show. To prove its point the presentation zooms in on the advertising hoarding. So was it Torez, as the Guardian article claims, or was it the Krasnoarmeysk which is 843 kilometres from Torez? Krasnoarmeysk has been occupied by the Ukrainian military since May 11 when a number of residents were killed by Petro Poroshenko's armed forces. The Russian presentation earlier shows its evidence of what it claims are BUK II systems in Ukrainian-held territory one of which is missing from its site on the day Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was brought down, killing nearly 300 passengers. The presentation, which is a lot more convincing than Colin Powell's presentation of weapons of mass destruction, shows satellite images of what is apparently a fighter plane in the vicinity of the Malaysian passenger plane just before it was shot down. Here is a clip from the presentation showing the hoarding.
Regarding the missile systems transporter video frame Russia asks, without making allegations:
"What kind of launching sytem is it? Where is it [being] transported? Where is it now? Why is it loaded with shot missile ammunition? What was the last time it launched missiles?"
These are fair questions. The release of the video by Kiev may well have been an attempt to point the blame elsewhere, but like the apparently fabricated evidence released by Kiev intelligence regarding what it claims was an admission by a Russian major to shooting down the passenger plane, it appears to be a fake concatenation of intercepts which did not relate to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 but the downing of a military plane the day before. The time stamp of that video, according to experts, shows it also to have been cobbled together and released the day before the disaster.
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