The surprising results of the MH17 criminal investigation

[Jayjay]

Spoiler alert!

Show

It was old man Russia all along! Who would have guessed?!

BBC:

International prosecutors investigating the downing of flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 say the missile that hit the plane was fired from territory controlled by Russian-backed rebels.

They said the missile launcher was brought into Ukraine from Russia and later returned there.

All 298 people on board the Boeing 777 died when it broke apart in midair flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

Prosecutors said they were not accusing Russia of involvement.

They said there were 100 people "linked to the crash or the transport of the Buk" missile, but they are yet to determine who could be held criminally responsible.

There is a need to establish who gave the order to move the missile launcher into eastern Ukraine, and where the order for it to be fired came from, investigators said.

Russia has disputed claims that the missile was fired by rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Here is the entire press conference, courtesy of Russian-funded Ruptly TV (so don't be surprised if it goes offline or is edited at some point):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BtBEV_rAd0

I have not watched the whole thing, but quickly jumping through it seems there are a couple of interesting new revelations:

1) The investigators obtained the original video of the famous "Paris Match" photos. This should put the claims that it was doctored to rest finally.

2) There are several new photographs of the BUK convoy that the investigators obtained, which have not been published yet. The presentation obscures the backgrounds and does not reveal the locations to protect the witnesses.

3) There is a plethora of intercepted communications where Russian and/or the rebel forces discuss the location of the BUK. Those are also the funniest parts of the video thanks to the overabundance of cursing.

4) There are in fact two more photographs of the smoke plume, and a number of witnesses who saw it or BUK launcher.

5) American satellite data was provided to the prosecutor and can be used in the criminal trial, though the material remains classified.

And Russia's response? They apparently "found" some new radar data that conflicts with their old data. And for some reason they have not even given that to the investigative team yet.

 

[barbos]

How is that surprising?
Yeah, and:

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I think that anyone finds it more surprising than they find it surprising that Obama actually had a US birth certificate. The only people lending credence to any alternate theories were the ones who had a partisan political agenda compelling them to try and deny the facts.

 

[whichphilosophy]

If it was a Russian missile, then what next? Is there any evidence of someone deliberately the plane while knowing it was a commercial aircraft?

 

[barbos]

I don't have Jayjay stamina to sift through all the evidence and will just repeat my position.
I think it's highly unlikely that russians are involved, it just makes no sense for them to supply that kind of weapons to rebels,
But if we assume that russians are involved then they will lie about it, as anybody else in that situation.
Having said that, I think Western side (including dutch investigation team) will lie too. maybe not outright lie but bending the truth they will. I simply saw that happening.

Anyway, It's a long video, where is the cursing part? If they obtained radio/cellphone conversation that would be pretty great evidence. But you need to link voice to actual person which would be hard to do without cooperation from rebels.

 

[barbos]

If it was a Russian missile, then what next? Is there any evidence of someone deliberately the plane while knowing it was a commercial aircraft?

I doubt anyone is suggesting deliberate act. Rebels certainly had no reasons to shoot passenger plane. Only ukrainian side could conceivably do that deliberately.

 

[Jayjay]

Anyway, It's a long video, where is the cursing part? If they obtained radio/cellphone conversation that would be pretty great evidence. But you need to link voice to actual person which would be hard to do without cooperation from rebels.

Here is that part of the video:

https://youtu.be/2BtBEV_rAd0?t=42m29s

The english translation obscures the Russian though.

 

[barbos]

Anyway, It's a long video, where is the cursing part? If they obtained radio/cellphone conversation that would be pretty great evidence. But you need to link voice to actual person which would be hard to do without cooperation from rebels.

Here is that part of the video:

https://youtu.be/2BtBEV_rAd0?t=42m29s

The english translation obscures the Russian though.

No, it does not obscure, one channel is pure russian. Well, original russian version does not mention word "BUK", they call it "vehicle" or "car".
Yeah, assuming context is right it sounds as if they are talking about BUK. I mean I don't see anything obviously suspicious in terms of forgery or other rational explanation why would they be discussing some vehicle going to Russia.
But, this is only evidence of russian cover up after the fact, it does not suggest that russians gave that BUK to rebels. Also, you need to link these voices to actual people, otherwise one can say it's just a few unknown russian actors reading the script.
And yeah, english audio is pretty funny. Reminded me how Hollywood movies were dubbed in russian in the 90s.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

If it was a Russian missile, then what next? Is there any evidence of someone deliberately the plane while knowing it was a commercial aircraft?

I don't think that anyone suggests they were deliberately targeting a commercial aircraft. They thought it was a Ukrainian war plane and shot it down. It was a mistake.

 

[Bronzeage]

If it was a Russian missile, then what next? Is there any evidence of someone deliberately the plane while knowing it was a commercial aircraft?

I doubt anyone is suggesting deliberate act. Rebels certainly had no reasons to shoot passenger plane. Only ukrainian side could conceivably do that deliberately.

There is a George Orwell short story about a British policeman in colonial Burma. An elephant has panicked in the marketplace and trampled a man. When the policeman gets there with his elephant gun, the animal is now outside the village and is calm and no longer a threat. He doesn't want to shoot the elephant, but the entire village is standing behind him and they are expecting him to do it. The policeman realizes he has to shoot the elephant, or the villagers will ridicule him. The elephant dies.

There's no point in looking for motives in this incident. No one benefits, either militarily or politically, from killing a couple hundred foreign civilians.

This is the scenario: A warlord/commander whatever needs to kick his prestige up a notch. To do this, he obtains this impressive piece of Russian hardware. The other warlords are jealous. They say things such as, "Sure, you've got your big rocket launcher, but you don't have the balls to use it."

He can't keep the thing forever, and there haven't been any fighter jets in the area. A plane appears high in the sky, on a familiar flight path. It's the same flight they see many times a month. The launcher is armed and ready and it's tracking the airliner.

There's probably a couple hundred fighters in the camp where the launcher is kept. They've been admiring it for weeks. They all think it's a shame they'll never get to use it. Suddenly, the machine is alive. The radar dish is tracking something. They see the contrail in the sky. Our warlord looks out the window and sees every one looking at the missile, waiting for it to take off. He really doesn't have a choice.

 

[barbos]

Interesting, this news is generating quite a stream of response in Russia. Almaz-Antey responded somewhat subdued, saying it's possible it was operator mistake not agreeing or disagreeing with latest report. I would interpret it as back-pedaling from their original stance that it was definitely from Ukraine controlled territory.

 

[Jayjay]

I doubt anyone is suggesting deliberate act. Rebels certainly had no reasons to shoot passenger plane. Only ukrainian side could conceivably do that deliberately.

There is a George Orwell short story about a British policeman in colonial Burma. An elephant has panicked in the marketplace and trampled a man. When the policeman gets there with his elephant gun, the animal is now outside the village and is calm and no longer a threat. He doesn't want to shoot the elephant, but the entire village is standing behind him and they are expecting him to do it. The policeman realizes he has to shoot the elephant, or the villagers will ridicule him. The elephant dies.

There's no point in looking for motives in this incident. No one benefits, either militarily or politically, from killing a couple hundred foreign civilians.

This is the scenario: A warlord/commander whatever needs to kick his prestige up a notch. To do this, he obtains this impressive piece of Russian hardware. The other warlords are jealous. They say things such as, "Sure, you've got your big rocket launcher, but you don't have the balls to use it."

He can't keep the thing forever, and there haven't been any fighter jets in the area. A plane appears high in the sky, on a familiar flight path. It's the same flight they see many times a month. The launcher is armed and ready and it's tracking the airliner.

There's probably a couple hundred fighters in the camp where the launcher is kept. They've been admiring it for weeks. They all think it's a shame they'll never get to use it. Suddenly, the machine is alive. The radar dish is tracking something. They see the contrail in the sky. Our warlord looks out the window and sees every one looking at the missile, waiting for it to take off. He really doesn't have a choice.

Nice piece of fiction, but not really in any way applicable to the facts of this particular case.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Interesting, this news is generating quite a stream of response in Russia. Almaz-Antey responded somewhat subdued, saying it's possible it was operator mistake not agreeing or disagreeing with latest report. I would interpret it as back-pedaling from their original stance that it was definitely from Ukraine controlled territory.

Don't you have a jpeg or meme to post in response to Russia not denying it anymore? I would have assumed you would have been stunned by that revelation after all the defending you did for Mother Russia.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If it was a Russian missile, then what next? Is there any evidence of someone deliberately the plane while knowing it was a commercial aircraft?

I don't think the shooters knew it was commercial. Rather, they were idiots, they figured that since it wasn't friendly it must be enemy and sent a missile after an unidentified target.

The thing is the shooters were most likely Russian troops pretending to be Ukranian. Pinning the blame where it belongs would mean some pretty hefty civil liability + a major case of egg-on-face for Russia.

 

[Jayjay]

If I were to play the devil's advocate, while it does look certain that Russia shot down the plane, it is possible that Ukraine is the one behind it anyway. How? Because it looks obvious that the BUK was driven from Donetsk to Shizhne hours before, according to a specific plan, and it only has a targeting radar so it probably was expecting a target to come from a particular angle. Only way they would know this if they A) intentionally shot down a passenger plane, which is not very plausible, or B) they had intel to suggest that there was going to be a real target, i.e. an Ukrainian air force plane coming from that direction around that time. Where would they get this intel? And if the intel was valid, where was that plane?

The conspiracy theory I am willing to entertain is that Ukraine knew the rebels/Russians had a BUK, so they deliberately fed false information to Russia that there was going to be a bomber or a troop transport coming at that time, and tricked them into shooting down a passenger plane instead. This would be rather hard to prove, but if I was Russia, it would be far easier to admit that Russia shot MH17 down by accident but based it on deliberately falsified intel from Ukrainian air force. The worst case scenario is that Russia has to own up to arming the rebels, which everyone knows anyway, and apologise and maybe pay some reparations to the families of the victims.

 

[barbos]

Interesting, this news is generating quite a stream of response in Russia. Almaz-Antey responded somewhat subdued, saying it's possible it was operator mistake not agreeing or disagreeing with latest report. I would interpret it as back-pedaling from their original stance that it was definitely from Ukraine controlled territory.

Don't you have a jpeg or meme to post in response to Russia not denying it anymore? I would have assumed you would have been stunned by that revelation after all the defending you did for Mother Russia.

To be clear I did not defend anybody. I was merely expressing my educated opinion. And my original opinion did not change much. it went from 50-50 between rebels and ukrainians to 100-0. Assuming that part with swearing is what they say it is then it was clearly rebels and russians are clearly covering for them. Whether or not russians supplied that BUK is still uncertain. I still think it's unlikely that russians would give BUK to them, it's just does not look like your typical russian special whatever operations thinking.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Don't you have a jpeg or meme to post in response to Russia not denying it anymore? I would have assumed you would have been stunned by that revelation after all the defending you did for Mother Russia.

To be clear I did not defend anybody.

The word I'm thinking involves a bull and its digestive tract.

I was merely expressing my educated opinion. And my original opinion did not change much. it went from 50-50 between rebels and ukrainians to 100-0.

Oh really. 50-50? My memory must be real shitty.

 

[barbos]

If I were to play the devil's advocate, while it does look certain that Russia shot down the plane, it is possible that Ukraine is the one behind it anyway. How? Because it looks obvious that the BUK was driven from Donetsk to Shizhne hours before, according to a specific plan, and it only has a targeting radar so it probably was expecting a target to come from a particular angle. Only way they would know this if they A) intentionally shot down a passenger plane, which is not very plausible, or B) they had intel to suggest that there was going to be a real target, i.e. an Ukrainian air force plane coming from that direction around that time. Where would they get this intel? And if the intel was valid, where was that plane?

The conspiracy theory I am willing to entertain is that Ukraine knew the rebels/Russians had a BUK, so they deliberately fed false information to Russia that there was going to be a bomber or a troop transport coming at that time, and tricked them into shooting down a passenger plane instead. This would be rather hard to prove, but if I was Russia, it would be far easier to admit that Russia shot MH17 down by accident but based it on deliberately falsified intel from Ukrainian air force. The worst case scenario is that Russia has to own up to arming the rebels, which everyone knows anyway, and apologise and maybe pay some reparations to the families of the victims.

Very Interesting theory but I did not watch the whole video so I am not so certain about bolded part.
At the same time I realize for your theory to be correct you need bolded part to be true.
Also I remember MH17 was diverted slightly presumably due to weather conditions.
But I think your theory is too complicated, ukrainians would have to know that russians are going to send BUK. Way too complicated for current ukrainian intelligence

To be clear I did not defend anybody.

The word I'm thinking involves a bull and its digestive tract.

Yeah, the word which describes original audio evidence which was circulated by western media.

I was merely expressing my educated opinion. And my original opinion did not change much. it went from 50-50 between rebels and ukrainians to 100-0.

Oh really. 50-50? My memory must be real shitty.

I think you confuse rebels with russians, they are not the same.

 

[TV and credit cards]

According to Wikipedia, the BUK has the ability to identify commercial aircraft so thinking it was something other than kind of falls by the wayside.
Bronzeage has the most plausible assessment. Some dickhead just had to push the button.

 

[barbos]

According to Wikipedia, the BUK has the ability to identify commercial aircraft so thinking it was something other than kind of falls by the wayside.

There are different BUKs and they all have different configurations. And really, there are no certain way to identify a plane.

Bronzeage has the most plausible assessment. Some dickhead just had to push the button.