The story of how and why Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine

ItIt’s one of the greatest war crimes of modern times – and the truth still hasn’t been revealed. On July 17th 2014 at 16:15 local time, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine. All 298 passengers died, including 80 children. Who fired the deadly missile? Over several months, Berlin-based investigative newsroom CORRECT!V has gathered together the facts, investigated in both eastern Ukraine and Russia, and has found witnesses to the missile launch.

The investigation unveiled a clear chain of evidence. It was a BUK M1 missile that ripped the passenger plane out of the sky – brought into position by members of the 53rd Russian air defence brigade from Kursk who, with the aim of protecting Russian tank units, were operating on Ukrainian territory without displaying national emblems.

Less than half an hour after the plane crashed, the commander-in-chief of the pro-Russian separatists in Donbass, Igor Girkin, celebrates shooting down a Ukrainian military jet. Girkin publishes the following on his profile on the Russian version of Facebook, Vkontakte (vk.com): “We warned you, don´t fly through our sky.”

The post is a success, it quickly receives over 2,000 likes. Then the post is deleted. Girkin, formerly a colonel in the Russian intelligence service, later said that the post was fake.

From that point on people began to speculate about how flight MH17 was shot down on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. It caused the deaths of 193 Dutch people, 44 Malaysians, 28 Australians, 12 Indonesians, 10 Britons, 4 Germans, 4 Belgians, 3 Filipinos, one Canadian and one New Zealander.

American diplomats claim that the airplane was shot down from territory controlled by pro-Russian separatists. The separatists reject blame. The Ukraine blames Russia, Russia blames the Ukraine. Nobody offers any hard evidence.

Whoever wants to investigate this case needs to work their way through a thicket of disinformation and false trails. There is absurd speculation including a claim that flight MH17 is actually the Malaysian Airlines plane that disappeared in March 2014 and already had dead bodies on board.

Investigative journalists from CORRECT!V  have carefully catalogued the credible information, including photographic evidence, and visited the Ukraine and Russia where they interviewed warlords and leaders of the pro-Russian separatists. To find out why the plane was shot down. To find the spot from where the missile was fired. To find witnesses.

For a long time, the crash site was a macabre killing field. The passengers´ bodies began to decompose in the hot Ukrainian summer while fighting continued nearby – and while militants and locals looted the victims´ luggage. After nerve-racking diplomatic negotiations, most of the body parts were recovered and transported to the Netherlands.

But for months after that nobody took care of the crash site. The war continued in the nearby villages and fields.

In November a wing of the Boeing 777 sticks up out of a misty, overgrown field. In a garden lie the broken pieces of a dead passenger’s record collection next to a piece of the airplane´s shell from around the cockpit, at the side an empty liquor bottle. Sometimes you see pro-Russian separatists posing in front of the plane´s wreckage. The fighters are bored. They haven´t seen an investigator in weeks and journalists rarely come by anymore. A few days after our visit more parts of the wreckage were collected and transported to the Netherlands.

In September the Dutch air traffic authority OVV published a report based on their investigation. The facts were listed without drawing conclusions or placing blame. This allows us to reconstruct the last minutes of the fatal flight:

At around 13:00 UTC, (15:00 in Germany and 16:00 in eastern Ukraine), the pilot of flight MH17 asks for permission to divert north by 20 nautical miles due to bad weather. There are storms around Donetsk. The Ukrainian air traffic control grants permission. Everything stays quiet and goes as usual. No excited voices, no panic, no disruptions in the airplane. That’s what the black box shows.

It abruptly stops recording at 13:20 UTC, 16:20 local time.

At that moment, explains the report, the airplane was hit by a large number of “objects with high energy”. These objects hit the airplane from above and the front at a high speed and with such a force that the rear probably broke apart in the air.

Few people know more about the air combat weapons systems of the former Eastern Bloc than Rupert Smid. He is a leading expert on air combat. Throughout our investigation we met him as part of our reporting in several countries including the Ukraine, Russia, Austria and the Netherlands. His name is not really Smid – but he can’t reveal his true identity. He works for an organization that does not want to be involved in this issue; his employers know nothing of our conversations. For this reason we cannot list his manifold qualifications and explain the background of his knowledge. We can only assure you that Rupert Smid is a leading expert on Russian air combat systems.

Smid tells us: “There is no doubt: flight MH17 was shot down with a missile. And this missile was fired from the ground and not from a fighter jet.”

Fighter pilots would attack a hostile airplane from the tail and not from the front. The back of the plane is the blind spot. If the fighter jet approaches from the front it can be spotted by the other pilots. Both airplanes would be racing towards each other at high speed. Moreover, flight MH17 was approaching Russian airspace; it was shot down around 40 kilometers from the border. The cockpit was looking towards Russia. The pilots were already in contact with  Russian air traffic control. “Accordingly, an attack plane at this height and velocity would have to be coming from Russian airspace,” says Smid.

But a ground-to-air missile is programmed to explode just in front of and above the targeted airplane. The plane then flies through a cloud of deadly shrapnel. And that’s just what the Dutch investigators described, says Smid. They wrote of “objects with high energy that penetrated the airplane from the front and above.”

And if it was a surface-to-air missile, it could have only been a BUK M1, an airplane killer developed by the Soviets. There are no permanent air defence systems installed in rural eastern Ukraine. The BUK M1 is highly mobile – and can shoot down airplanes at high altitudes with great precision. It can easily reach 15 kilometers of altitude, approaching its target at three times the speed of sound. The warhead contains 70 kilograms of explosives. Just before impact it explodes into thousands of pieces of sharp shrapnel – “objects with high energy”.

A BUK-unit consists of four subunits which are often positioned kilometers apart: first, a missile launch pad mounted on a tank; second, a radar car from which soldiers search the sky for targets; third, a commando vehicle from which officers give the command to fire. Fourth, these are followed by a supply unit that carries additional missiles. The system can attack up to six targets simultaneously, missiles can be launched 22 seconds after target acquisition if all goes smoothly. A BUK launch pad equipped with its own radar can even operate autonomously, though with reduced accuracy. The subunits always work separately – and the radio and commando cars do not move with the BUK launch pad. On flat ground they can be positioned up to 30 kilometers apart, says air combat expert Smid.

A launch pad leaves marks identical to those of a tank

Another significant point is that the BUK M1 system acquires its targets with an “active radar”: radar beams are transmitted into the sky, the enemy is acquired through the returning echo. The active radar places the BUK team in danger: the pilot of the enemy fighter jet knows when they have been spotted. Smid: “As soon as a BUK’s radar is opened, a light flashes in the cockpit that pilots refer to as the ‘oh shit light'.”

The pilot immediately has all necessary information about the missile pad type and position. The BUK team that opens the radar is aware of this. A deadly duel ensues: whoever shoots first survives.

“Every second that the radar is open is life-threatening,” confirms a former BUK operator from the Ukrainian army in Kiev. For that reason, the radar is only opened for up to 40 seconds during attack.

At the same time the BUK’s active radar cannot clearly determine the type of airplane targeted. Fighter jet? Passenger plane? Difficult to tell for missile operators. They can only determine whether a friend or foe is approaching. Friends are airplanes of their own air force. All others are enemies. Civilian planes such as MH17 are tagged as enemies.

The inherent poor design of Soviet air defence systems has had fatal consequences in the past. In 2001 a misfired BUK caused a catastrophe. The Ukrainian navy mistakenly shot down a Russian civilian plane near the Crimea during a military exercise. All 78 passengers on board the Tupolev died. The Ukrainian Security Council admitted to shooting down the plane and took action: the Ukraine mothballed all its BUKs for ten years.

Now we turn to the issue of tanks – and the irresponsible carelessness of Western airlines. The BUK guided missile system has a clear tactical function – to protect tanks and ground troops. “Russian tank units only move when they are accompanied by BUKs,” says Rupert Smid, the air combat specialist. “Without missile protection such vehicles are easy targets for fighter jets.” A military inevitability of which military commanders in all NATO states are aware.

Mobile air defence systems are always found in the vicinity of tanks, confirms a spokesman of the German army. The higher-ups at the German Defence Ministry refuse to give an in-depth interview. Whoever admits that they knew what was going on – that Russian tanks are accompanied by BUKs which threaten civilian airplanes – will have to face questions about why they refused to issue a warning. When there was still time. The Defence Ministry does obviously not want to be asked these questions.

A spokesman merely offers a written response that refers to an answer the Federal Government gave to small parliamentary inquiry from the Green Party in August 2014: “The Federal Government was not able to assume that civilian air traffic at the given altitude could become targeted by attacks.” That’s it.

 Were there tanks in eastern Ukraine? Yes – on June 14th, around a month before MH17 was shot down, the US State Department declares that Russian tank units have crossed the border to the Ukraine and have been sighted in the eastern Ukrainian city of Snizhne. And NATO publishes photographs of tanks without national markings in the eastern Ukrainian city of Snizhne. Russia and the separatists deny the deployment.

In the following weeks the war escalates. Ukrainian fighter jets and helicopters attack tanks in the separatists’ territory. They find success: the pro-Russian separatists are pushed back. But the Ukrainian air force suffers losses. On July 12th a Ukrainian attack helicopter is shot down over eastern Ukraine. Two days later an Antonov An-26 military jet suffers the same fate. Another two days later a Suchoi Su-25 fighter jet.

Not all of these airplanes could have been hit by shoulder-fired missiles. The targeting of the Su-25 and the Antonov suggest the use of complex weapons systems such as BUKs. In response the Ukraine changes its fighter jet strategy: due to the losses in the first phase of the “anti-terror operations”, a Ukrainian Security Council spokesman said fighter jets were deployed more carefully.

High above the conflict zone, at an altitude above 10,000 meters, passenger jets continue to fly in the eastern Ukraine. Some airlines decided to avoid the region months before the disaster, but many other airlines continued to route flights over eastern Ukraine. In the week before the disaster hundreds of airplanes crossed the war zone, including Lufthansa flights.

After the Antonov was shot down, the Ukrainian air security authorities close off the airspace just below 10,000 meters. Above that level civilian air traffic continued as before. Even though this altitude was a combat zone in modern air-tank warfare. Besides the Su-25 planes, the Ukrainian air force also uses MiG-29 fighter jets that can reach an altitude of 18,000 meters. The jets then drop down to a lower combat altitude to attack enemy tanks and BUK units. A BUK team risks its life if it has not already attacked an enemy plane at a high altitude during its approach.

Civil air traffic grants Ukrainian fighter pilots valuable seconds in their fight for survival against BUKs. Ukrainian fighter jets have the ability to hide between passenger planes. Anyone who targets a fighter jet from the ground risks shooting down a passenger aircraft. We can compare the standoff to an old-fashioned shootout in the Wild West. If this were such a duel, then one of the gunfighters would have to be fighting in the open while the other gunfighter would be hiding within a class of school children.

The EU states should have warned the airlines. Their military experts knew they couldn’t rely on cooperation with the Ukrainian authorities in a wartime situation. In July 2014 the Ukrainian state was close to falling apart, a civil war was raging, entire regions were occupied by Russian troops. But nothing happened. The EU refused to call the war a war; its member states knew that Russian tanks were in the separatists’ territory, but they refrained from drawing the necessary conclusions.

And the airlines? Diverting to alternative longer routes would lead to higher costs, but when is this necessary?

In an email, a Lufthansa spokesman said the German airline flew over eastern Ukraine until July 17th 2014. Furthermore, he said that Lufthansa conducted a security analysis, but that only governments possessed all necessary information for determining risk. The spokesman highlighted that Lufthansa’s primary concern is the safety of its passengers.

Without their knowledge, the passengers became human shields in the aerial warzone over eastern Ukraine. In the night after MH17 crashed, the Russian president Vladimir Putin makes a statement on Russian television. He says that the government in Kiev is responsible for the tragedy – and directs the Russian authorities to collect “objective information” about the catastrophe to offer explanations to the world public.

Four days later, Lieutenant General Andrey Kartapolov, vice chief-of-staff of the Russian armed forces, presents the “objective information” in a press conference that is broadcast live on TV (see video below). The officer sits under a massive screen with two stars on his epaulette and neatly parted hair, offering maps, tables and photographs. Kartapolov develops two scenarios for how MH17 was shot down, an old principle of Russian propaganda: mix up the possible truth with so many plausible, even absurd versions that everything seems to become relative.

The first scenario: Kartapolov says that MH17 could have diverted from its given route and come within five or even three kilometers of a Ukrainian fighter jet. This jet could have fired a missile.

An unlikely scenario: the Dutch report, which was published around a month after the Russian press conference, makes no mention of a fighter jet in the vicinity of MH17.

The second scenario: Kartapolov presents satellite pictures that allegedly show a BUK unit from the Ukrainian army in a field near the village of Zaroshchens‘ke. He asserts that two points could be seen on July 17th: two BUK launch pads from which the deadly missile emerged.

A likely scenario? When a BUK is fired it produces noise and clouds of exhaust. The launch is deafeningly loud; a BUK attack is accompanied by a “substantial noise both during the missile launch and its flight.” So says a study from the professional association of Russian engineers that was presented on Russian state television. Or, as the aerial-weapons expert Rupert Smid said: a blast, a prolonged sound and an explosion in the sky.

The missile is launched out of a fireproof container, leaving few visible burn marks; the launch pad leaves marks on the ground that are identical to those of a tank. A missile’s condensation trail is only visible for a longer time if the wind is calm. But there was a light wind on July 17th. The Ukrainian measuring station in the area determined a wind speed of five metres per second one hour before the plane was shot down. That corresponds to a wind strength of 3. Did the inhabitants of Zaroshchens‘ke see or hear anything? If a missile was fired in their vicinity they should have heard something; they should remember.

This is war, and truth is a weapon

Eastern Ukraine, in November. The drive begins in Donetsk, the pro-Russian separatists’ stronghold. Fear of war has frozen life in a city of more than a million. Shopping malls are closed or have been looted. Banks are bolted shut, cash machines are empty. The streets become empty before nightfall sets in. Despite a ceasefire that began on September 5th, explosions can be heard from the battle over the city’s airport.

Zaroshchens‘ke is 50 kilometers to the east via the N21 road. It connects Donetsk and Luhansk, the two primary strongholds of the pro-Russian separatists, and is controlled by their fighters. As was the case on July 17th. The road goes through flat territory. The asphalt bears the scars of the war: traces of tanks and explosions. The asphalt is initially thick, before Luhansk it becomes a dirt road.

Checkpoints have been established before every town and turnoff. Armed men in motley uniforms control the cars. There is a noticeable number of women in camouflage among the fighters, they carry Kalashnikovs on their shoulders. The landscape is flat; we can see heaps of coal and rubble along the horizon. Donbass, the eastern Ukrainian coal region, is similar to the German Ruhr area. But most of the mines are out of use. Only a few shafts are open.

Zaroshchens‘ke is an inconspicuous village. Flat wind-skewed farm buildings lie along two streets, along with vegetable gardens and stables. Behind that is the path that can be seen on the satellite photos from the Russian defence ministry. The clay path bears traces that could be from a tank. Deep marks in the ground can be seen at two points. Something heavy must have stood here.

But the overgrown field shows no traces that suggest a missile launch. Only one thing is noticeable: a deep furrow has been dug behind one of the marks on the ground, while the rest of the field is unworked and completely overgrown.

The villagers are not be named in this story. The people in eastern Ukraine need to be protected from possible consequences. The inhabitants of the separatists’ territory are afraid – of the pro-Russian separatists and of the Ukrainian army. They don’t want to say anything wrong.

Above the field a 70-year-old retired woman lives in a little cottage. Her white hair is tied back, her rugged face has been tanned by the sun. The old lady lives alone. No, she says, on July 17th she noticed nothing out of the ordinary. No unusual noise, no condensation trails, no suspicious vehicles. Definitely not from the Ukrainian army. “The Ukrainians weren’t here, they don’t dare come to these parts.”

The lady is an ardent follower of the Russian separatists – and buys into the most abstruse conspiracy theories. US oil companies wanted to exterminate the population of Donbass through fracking. After this failed, the US and the Ukrainian fascists drew the country into war. Only Putin was able to prevent a genocide of the Russian-speaking Ukrainian population.

Not all villages think like the old lady from the edge of town. One farmer has little interest in politics. “I have cows that need to be milked every day,” says the women who stands by the gate of her farm in a headscarf and jacket. She was also in Zaroshchens‘ke on July 17th and did not notice anything. She received an excited call from a relative in Moscow after the press conference. But no: “All nonsense, nothing happened here.” Up until now they have been spared from the war, only once did a rocket fly over the town the end of July. “We ran into the basement with the children."

The villagers gather on the street. Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything. There was no BUK missile fired in Zaroshchens‘ke on July 17th 2014. Definitely not by the Ukrainian army because it did not control the fields around Zaroshchens‘ke.

There is a second important lead, found by the British investigative journalism site Bellingcat discovered it. Bellingcat is led by journalist Eliot Higgins. His method is to meticulously investigate every trace that an event leaves on the internet. Photos, videos, posts in social networks. This shows that digging around in the depths of the internet can lead to stunning revelations. Among other things, Bellingcat was able to uncover secret arms shipments in Syria and reconstruct a poison gas attack.

A BUK launch pad is an impressive vehicle. It is bound to be noticed. On July 17th, the day of the catastrophe, a BUK launch pad is in transit on the N21 road. It leaves Donetsk around 11 a.m. It sits on a flatbed truck with a white driving cab; a photographer from the French magazine Paris Match shoots a photo of it from a driving car. The photographer is close by: we can see the scuffed flank of the launch pad, parts of an identification number that has been drawn over are visible, especially the first and last numbers of the three-digit code: a 3 at the front, a 2 at the back, the middle number is illegible. A BUK with the number 3*(illegible)2 is moving east.

On the side of the truck is a telephone number. It leads to a truck rental company in Donetsk. The owner later reports that the vehicle was stolen from him in June by pro-Russian separatists.

The truck with the BUK launch pad 3*2 continues on its journey. It is filmed again in Zuhres. Later a pedestrian in the city of Torez photographs the BUK from a petrol station.

The missile launcher later reaches the mining town of Snizhne. Here the BUK 3*2 drives off the truck; a photo shows the armored vehicle driving through the city with four missiles.

CORRECT!V compared the photos from the web with the actual places. All photos are authentic. There is no doubt: on the afternoon of July 17th 2014 a BUK with the identification number 3*2 took position in the little mining town of Snizhne, a territory controlled by Russian separatists.

But where did the guided weapons system come from? Bellingcat was also able to answer this question. Every BUK has an identification number. This allows them to be clearly identified. An unknown soldier photographed launch pad number 3*2 months before MH17 was shot down and posted it online: it can be identified. The BUK belongs to the 53rd air defence brigade which is stationed in the western Russian city of Kursk. There are further peculiarities.

A sergeant of the 53rd brigade who is particularly active online posted numerous pictures of his unit on his page on Vkontakte (vk.com), the Russian clone of Facebook. The sergeant’s name is Ivan Krasnoproshin. Among his pictures is a photo of his discharge from the Russian army in mid-June. There is a photo of his unit’s logbook which lists the people on the evening roll call. Number one: Sergeant Krasnoproshin, followed by 13 privates. Every day is crossed off. The last entry is on June 13th. There is a hand-written note behind Sergeant Krasnoproshin’s name: “Discharged due to completion of service period according to order no. (illegible).” Indeed, according to the logbook, Sergeant Krasnoproshin was not the only member of his unit to be suddenly discharged from the Russian military. Three other soldiers in Sergeant Krasnoproshin’s unit—including Sergeant Krasnoproshin nearly one third of the unit’s members—were discharged on the same day and for the same reason.

Why was he discharged? Perhaps so he could march into Ukraine as a “civilian” and fight alongside so many other Russian soldiers? The logbook doesn’t say.

In the middle of July, several days after Krasnoproshin and his comrades were discharged by order, a long convoy of the 53rd air defence brigade made its way towards Ukraine. Again someone posts a photo on a social network. Again we can see BUK launch pad number 3*2.

The marks on the launch vehicle’s body are also clearly distinctive. The marks on the BUK 3*2 photographed in Russia in June are the same as the marks on launch pad 3*2 in the separatists’ territory.

Again there is little doubt: it was the 53rd Russian air defence brigade from Kursk that took position in Snizhne in eastern Ukraine on that fateful afternoon.

Snizhne, in November. The asphalt is furrowed with tank tracks. The marks are everywhere. On the square by the market, on the main road, in little alleyways. Countless tanks must have driven through here. The city has been controlled by pro-Russian separatists since April. They must have been Russian tanks.

July 15th 2014 – two days before MH17 was shot down – brought the city bad luck. At the break of dawn a missile hit and destroyed a residential building. Up to 13 people died. What did the missile aim to hit? Was it targeting tanks?

An Armenian restaurant near the market. Everything is red, the wallpaper, the tablecloths and the chairs; heavy curtains cover the windows. Alexander Bondarenko enters the room. He is the leader of the pro-Russian separatists in Snizhne. “I’m a miner,” he introduces himself, offering a heavy handshake and a quiet voice. Until the beginning of June he worked as an engineer in one of the shafts. He has a rugged face and exerts the prudence of a technician. He only wears a uniform when he has to.

Bondarenko sits down at a table and folds his hands.

Question: “There are photos of a BUK in Snizhne. Do you know about these photos?”

“No. There was never a BUK in Snizhne.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely sure. Otherwise it would have been photographed, just like the tanks.”

“Which tanks?”

“The ones that came from Luhansk.”

“Who did the tanks belong to?”

“They didn’t say on them who they belonged to, they were green. Ideally they were ours.” He laughs.

“Who flew the attack on July 15th?”

“Those were Ukrainian fighter jets of the Su class.”

“How did you react to that?”

“We set up air defences in the North of Snizhne because Russia is to the south and we don’t have to worry about anything coming from there.”

“Also with BUKs?”

“No. With shoulder-fired missiles. With a maximum range of 5,000 meters altitude.”

We don’t know to what extent we can trust Bondarenko. This is war, and the truth is a weapon. The separatist leader is probably lying in regard to the decisive points. But he admits that Russian tanks were in the town – and that BUKs must therefore be close by, at least according to Russian military doctrine. And Bondarenko says that the separatists established air defence systems in the north of Snizhne. An important piece of information. This fits with a low-quality satellite photo published on the Facebook page of the US embassy in Kiev. It shows an area north of Snizhne – and a field from where the deadly missile was allegedly fired at MH17.

That evening a BUK launch pad headed back to Russia

The field cannot be viewed easily. To the east, a factory site blocks the view to the N21 road, a railway embankment and a little forest protect the field from sight in the north. Beyond the embankment lies a settlement.

The field is unworked. There are a few beer bottles lying around. In some places the ground is darker. Soot? Wide track marks are visible within a field of grain, too wide for a tractor. They must be from a track vehicle with a wide wheel base.

The settlement by the railway embankment consists of flat farm buildings surrounded by fences and walls. Dogs bark. At first there are no people in sight. If someone appears, they immediately go on their way. The people are afraid. “They’ll kill me if I say something,” says one man.

A woman lives with her daughter right by the embankment. She was in her house on July 17th 2014. “I heard a loud bang,” she says, then her neighbour called and told her that an airplane had been shot down. “We saw the smoke.” She refuses to answer any further questions.

After long knocks an old man with scrubby white hair under a cap shows up and agrees to talk. He also has a clear memory of July 17th 2014. This date is a day that is etched into the villagers’ memories. Like the fall of the wall for the Germans. Everyone knows what they did on that day. The man with scrubby hair says that he was not in the village on July 17th, but that the roof of his house was broken when he came back – as was the case with many others in the village. Then he calls the neighbours together in his garden. Two women and two men come by. A conversation begins.

A women says: “An airplane flew by, well, we don’t know if it was a plane. We heard something, a long sound, then there was a noise.” She uses the Russian word “shum”. A long prolonged swooshing noise. She remembers it well.

Another women could “see thick smoke” from the factory. “Everyone was alarmed.” Where did the smoke come from? She becomes unsettled. “How should we know what that was? We heard that something exploded.”

A man suddenly says: “Over here the railroad ties and the grass were burning.” But then one of the women elbows him in the side and he shuts his mouth. A cell phone rings, the people walk away.

Another visit, two days later. It’s early in the day, around 9 o’clock. The streets in the settlement are empty. Dogs bark once again, they pull on chains between metal doors. After long knocks a villager opens his front door. “Maybe you’re a spy?” is his first question after a quick introduction. The man fled town to his daughter’s in August because of the fighting. But on July 17th 2014 he was in town. Any question about this day scares him.

“I won’t tell you everything about that, I’m afraid it would end badly for me.” The CORRECT!V journalist introduces himself—and shows identification. He says that he is here to learn more. The people in Europe want to know what happened, why so many people had to die here in the Ukraine, shot down in a peaceful airplane.

The man hesitates. Then he starts to talk: “They shot the airplane down. The missile flew from here. We saw how it flew from here.”

He points to the railway embankment. A friend of his had already seen the missile before. “He called me and said there’s this crazy thing standing here. Four missiles are standing here.” The friend will also remain unnamed. “He is afraid. These are dangerous times.” But one question still bothers the witness. “They planned everything. I just don’t know why they brought the missile here?”

He finally starts talking. First he heard a “bang” that shook the tiles on the roof. “That must have been when it flew off. Then there was a long sound in the air. After that a strong explosion in the sky. I ran out between the street and garage and couldn’t see anything at first, but when I then ran onto the street I saw the airplane falling down to the ground.”

When asked whether Russian soldiers or separatists fired the missile, the man laughs: “Which miner shoots missiles? No, those were specialists. Do you think I go shooting missiles?”

This witness completes the picture: it was a BUK M1 rocket that brought the passenger plane out of the sky – brought into position by soldiers of the 53rd air defence brigade from Kursk who were in the city of Snizhne without national markings to protect Russian tank units.

Only one question is still open. Who gave the command to shoot? A Russian officer? A pro-Russian separatist?

On the evening of July 17th, when the news that a passenger plane has been shot down is going around the world, a video is made of BUK launch pad 3*2. Once again, the missile launcher is standing on the flatbed truck with a white driving cab. It drives under an advertising sign for the Ukrainian car dealer “Bogdan”. The BUK launch pad is not covered up. There is one missile missing.

This video is the only visual document on the internet that all sides – even the Russians – recognize to be authentic. Lieutenant General Kartapolow shows a freeze frame from the video at the press conference in July – and claims that it was taken in Krasnoarmiis‘k. The city was controlled by the Ukrainian army at that time. Kartapolow confirms that the BUK launch pad is missing one missile. This provides proof for his conclusion: the video proves that the Ukrainians are to blame.

“We have a number of questions,” stated Lieutenant General Kartapolow at the press conference. “What kind of a missile launch pad is this? Where was it brought? Where is it now? Why is it not transporting a full load of missiles? And when was it fired the last time?”

But then Bellingcat examined the Russian version of the freeze frame. A little speech bubble had been inserted; when enlarged, it supposedly showed the text of an advertisement with a car dealer’s address – in Krasnoarmiis‘k.

But it was faked.

In reality there is no address on the sign, it merely says: “nationwide car dealer”. The Russian lieutenant general presented a forgery.

He thus indirectly confirmed the authenticity of other photos that show the BUK launch pad on the bed of a truck with a white driving cab. On July 17th, on road N21, in the separatists’ territory.

The photo was actually taken in Luhansk, at the end of road N21 – between Snizhne and the Russian border. CORRECT!V investigators visited the crossroads in Luhansk in November and can confirm: the photo is authentic. Even the advertisement for the car dealership “Bogdan” is still there, although it is ripped.

To recap: on the evening of July 17th a BUK launch pad that was missing one missile drove from Snizhne towards the Russian border.

Once again: who sat on the launch pad when the missile went up? Who gave the command to fire? A Russian officer? A Ukrainian separatist?

A meeting with the powerful separatist commander Aleksander Khodakovskiy. Just after July 17th he admitted to a reporter from the news agency Reuters that the separatists possessed a BUK on the day the plane was shot down. As soon as the statement was made, he retracted it, claiming he had been misquoted. What did he really say?

It’s nighttime, Khodakovskiy drives a heavy all-terrain vehicle through pitch-dark Donetsk. He commands the Vostk battalion; the 42-year-old is proud to be the principal leader of the separatist army. At this time of night the streets of Donetsk are empty. The inhabitants are afraid to go out. The commander steps on the gas pedal. A heavily armed bodyguard sits next to him.

During the drive the commander negotiates a deal with the Ukrainian army via radio. One of his subordinates wants to go to his father’s funeral on Ukrainian territory and requires safe passage. Khodakovskiy used to be in the Ukrainian spy service. He is a specialist in counter-terrorism and still has many friends on the other side. The Ukrainian loves deals, and he wants the reporter to take note.

'A Russian Su fighter jet was going crazy in the sky'

He reads Kierkegaard and cites Schopenhauer. A kind of eastern Ukrainian Wallenstein. “What we need, we steal,” he says. Like a flatbed truck with a white driving cab?

Khodakovskiy clarifies: “I know for sure that the popular militia did not shoot down the Boeing.”

“Why not?”

“We didn’t and don’t have any specialists who can operate such high precision weapons systems.”

“Do you have BUKs?”

“Yes, now we have one.”

“As on July 17th?”

Again Khodakovskiy evades the question:

“I knew that the BUK missile was on its way there at the time of the tragedy, but that it didn’t arrive.”

Question after question, he avoids direct answers. Again and again. He only admits two things: that the deadly missile was fired from the area around Snizhne – but not by the separatists. And that the separatists can’t operate complex weapons systems.

Who pulled the trigger? Khodakovskiy takes his time to answer the question. He drinks a sip of tea and talks about world politics, from the US to Russia. He lectures more than he answers the questions. At the end the commander becomes philosophical. “What’s important is not the action itself, but the perpetrator’s relation to the action.” The perpetrator could be proud of his crime, or regret it.

Is this thought marked by a feeling of guilt? And what would the separatist’s relation be to the shooting down of a passenger plane with 298 victims? Complicity? Shared responsibility?

Air combat expert Rupert Smid has no doubt: “Russian missiles are only fired on the command of Russian officers,” he says.

July 17th did not begin well for the crew of BUK 3*2. That morning, the Ukrainian Security Council reported the destruction of three Russian tanks – which officers of the 53rd air defence brigade should have protected. They had failed.

The BUK is outdated, but it is a highly complex and deadly system; its mastery requires continuous training. During Soviet times Ukrainian soldiers learned how to operate the guided missile system at the Institute for Missile Technology in Kiev. The training took five years. The institute in the Ukrainian capital was closed in 1995. Many of the former graduates have left the service, but they remember their time as students.

“It’s not like riding a bicycle,” says one former graduate from the missile institute. The BUK squad needs to be a well-rehearsed team that continuously trains the processes. “Even veterans forget it quickly,” says one former soldier. Today he is a businessman. He does not want his name to be printed.

Viktor Kusovkin, a comrade of Ivan Krasnoproshin, confirms these statements. Kusovkin also served in the 53^rd Russian air defence brigade in Kursk a number of years ago. After four months of training he was allowed to drive the BUK launch pad. We reach him via telephone, Viktor Kusovkin had also posted his number on Vkontakte (vk.com). Firing a BUK? There was never any question of that for him. “Of course not. You don’t let conscripts fire. That doesn’t work. You have to graduate from a military institute first,” says Kusovkin. “That’s a pretty difficult task. Only officers can do it.”

There is hardly any doubt: a Russian officer gave the command to shoot down MH17.

Kursk, December 2014. The 53rd air defence brigade is situated in a pine forest east of the city. Even the name sounds like a tank rolling over asphalt: not far from the city the German Wehrmacht and the Soviet army fought the largest tank battle in history in the summer of 1943 – with over 10,000 vehicles. The cemeteries of the fallen soldiers go into the horizon.

Memories of the 'Great Patriotic War' mark the city. A slogan on a high-rise building reads “Kursk, city of war glory”; extensive myths of honour commemorate the victory and “everlasting glory”. A wide road was turned into mile of victory after the end of the Soviet Union; it has a triumphal arch, a church, tanks and cannons between the lanes.

Drizzling rain, temperatures just below freezing; the winter is mild and grey. People are anxious, the fall of the ruble exchange rate has caused them worry.

These days it is difficult to approach soldiers and officers. Russia’s military institutions are already secretive, and now Russian television only broadcasts the Kremlin’s propaganda: a fascist coup d'état has occurred in the Ukraine; the US is crushing Russia; foreigners are spies.

Eventually a dissident businessman puts us in contact with a former traffic policeman; if anyone knows something about the missile brigade’s movements, then it will be him and his colleagues. They are the ones who accompany vehicles through the city.

We meet Sergej – also an alias – in an empty restaurant. All communication is in whispers. We fall silent when the waitress approaches the table, but we have permission to record the conversation on tape.

For a long time the policeman talks about his work, his former colleagues, the missile brigade. Suddenly he remembers something unusual. “You know, I have many friends who are fighter pilots, and I know from them that the Russian air force has a tradition: they celebrate military victories with wild air acrobatics.” The pilots are allowed to have some fun.

On July 17th he looked out the window and saw something incredible. “A Russian Su fighter jet was going crazy in the sky. The pilot was performing the most daring stunts. It was magnificent.”

Sergej watched the air show go on and on. “I figured they must have some reason to celebrate,” he continues. Shortly after that he saw the news about MH17 on TV. “That shocked me. Was it a coincidence? I can’t say.”

The officers of the 53rd air defence brigade – the men who could have given the order to shoot down the civilian airplane – live with their families in the high-rise complex 'Marschall Schukhow' in a pine forest across from the barracks. The complex was built by a Turkish construction company in 1992 with funds from the German government. It was to be a home for Soviet soldiers who were relocated from Berlin to Russia after German reunification. Today about 4,500 people live in Schukhow.

Five story buildings, a school, nursery school and an “officers’ house”. The complex has seen better days. The streets are ripped up, there is no restaurant or café. Only small shops that mainly sell cigarettes and liquor.

In the evening the children who live in the complex play a concert in the “officers’ house”. They want to perform dances from around the world. For a long time the room is empty aside from the children’s parents. But then, five minutes before the show begins, about sixty recruits from a neighbouring barracks arrive on the scene.

Lockstep march, gather, halt. The recruits take position by the entrance. Then they march into the concert hall.

“Can we talk to you?”

“No,” says a commander, “no questions.”

“Is it OK to take photos?”

“Alright, fine with me.”

The children dance and sing. The soldiers clap. The concert comes to an end after one hour. Stand up, halt, and march back to the barracks. One of the soldiers manages to hop into a store to buy cigarettes.

After several days we leave Kursk. We have tried everything to make contact with the officers of the air defence brigade. We have failed – for now. This is where our investigation ends.

But it has uncovered significant revelations: the Russian government under Vladimir Putin is responsible for shooting down the airplane. Russia destabilized eastern Ukraine and sent troops and equipment into the separatists’ territory which was used to shoot down MH17. It does not matter whether it was intentional or happened accidently in a moment of panic.

The Ukrainian government shares partial responsibility. It used the passengers of civilian aircrafts as human shields in its air attacks on Russian tanks. Its fighter jets hid behind planes packed with holidaymakers, placing hundreds of innocent lives at risk.

The EU governments must also assume partial responsibility. They were afraid to call the war in eastern Ukraine a war and did not take the necessary consequences. They did not prohibit Western airlines from flying over the warzone. They were afraid to provoke Putin’s government. The EU should have recognized that Russian tanks and air defence units were active in Ukraine by instituting a no-fly-zone. Politicians focused on appeasing the Russians rather than admitting the truth.

Finally, the airlines are also responsible because they didn’t see the danger, whether for political or economic reasons: they endangered the lives of their passengers by flying over eastern Ukraine.

They all share responsibility. Russia is primarily responsible. But to this day the international community refuses to speak out. To this day, not a single major country has pointed the finger at Putin.

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This investigation was by Marcus Bensman and David Crawford (assisted in an editing role by David Schraven). The original publication on CORRECT!V can be found here in English, here in Russian and here in German.
Photos: Ivo Mayr, Anastasia Vlasova, Bellingcat, Algemeen Dagblad
Copyright CORRECT!V

• An abridged French version of this article can be found here.