Why is Russia Being Blamed For The Downing of Flight MH17 - Again?

Andrés Perezalonso
Sott.net

On Thursday 24th of May, the Dutch, Australian and Ukranian-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) on the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 gave a press conference in which, for the first time, they explicitly accused Russia of providing the anti-aircraft system that shot down the passenger plane - although they had suggested as much in the past.

They made two central claims:

1. That a BUK-TELAR Russian unit from the 53rd brigade based in Kursk crossed the border into Ukraine, and
2. That the markings on the remains of the BUK missile allegedly used in the incident indicate it was Soviet made.

Bizarrely, the first claim is borrowed largely from articles on the Bellingcat website (such as this one). JIT members themselves mentioned that the arguments had been published by Bellingcat already, although they insisted they performed their own 'independent analysis' and that they are withholding further evidence. Eliot Higgins, the man who runs Bellingcat, is listed as an "expert" on the Atlantic Council website, and described as a "Nonresident Senior Fellow, Digital Forensic Research Lab, Future Europe Initiative". The Atlantic Council 'think-tank' is known for its pro-US/NATO and anti-Russian stance, and among the members of its Advisory Board and Directors we find Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, James Woolsey, James Clapper, Rupert Murdoch and the heads of finance and defense corporations such as Lockheed Martin, Airbus and Goldman Sachs, among many others. Thus, any research based on Bellingcat's is hardly unbiased and independent.

Spot The Similarity

The evidence presented at the JIT press conference was based on photographs and videos from Google maps and social media images. By matching casual videos of a passing Russian military convoy within Russia with Google maps land features, JIT claim they could track six BUK-TELAR vehicles leaving a Kursk base on the 23rd of June and somewhat approaching the Ukranian border. The last image of the convoy on the Russian side was taken on the 25th of June (almost a full month before the MH17 incident). Further images and videos of a single BUK-TELAR on the Ukranian side being carried by a different truck on the day of the crash, 17th of July, and the following day, are used as evidence that this one unit made it across the border, and it is assumed to be the one that made the killer shot.

In order to establish that this is indeed one of the Russian BUK-TELAR units and not a Ukranian one, the JIT engages in an argument about the 'fingerprint' of the unit on the Ukranian side which, it claims, matches one of the Russian ones. Since the photographs were taken by casual passersby with mobile phone cameras, the resolution is not very high - not to mention the ease with which these images and videos could have been manipulated, as explained here. Reaching definite conclusions based on these is as speculative as you would expect from an armchair conspiracy theorist such as Bellingcat's Elliot Higgins.

The 'fingerprint' refers to things like the position of the markings on the tank and the type of wheels - whether with spokes or without them - and other small features and spots on the machine. 

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