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FLIGHT MH17
SEARCHING FOR THE TRUTH
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THE FACTS
On July 17th Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over Eastern Ukraine. All 298
passengers died. Back in the middle of June, the Nato showed pictures of Russian tanks
in the city of Snizhne in Eastern Ukraine. The German Bundeswehr and Nato know that
Russian tanks do not move through enemy territory without the protection of BUK
missile systems. Therefore, the flight altitude of ordinary planes was essentially a war
zone since the middle of June. According to the CORRECT!V investigation, the German
government and all other Nato countries would have had to warn the airlines not to fly
across Eastern Ukraine. The Dutch government already confirmed our investigation. The
German government still rejects it.
CORRECT!V talked to witnesses of the downing of Flight MH17 in Eastern Ukraine. In
a complex investigation in Vienna, the Netherlands, Ukraine, and Russia, we talked to
military experts, warlords of the separatists, former BUK engineers and former soldiers
of the 53rd Air Defense Brigade. All of them confirm: The separatists were not able to use
such a complex missile system. Therefore, only Russian officers could have given the
order to down Flight MH17.
On July 17th a lot of pictures and videos were taken of the BUK missile system in the part
of Eastern Ukraine that was controlled by separatists. The international investigative
team Bellingcat identified the BUK as part of the Russian 53rd Air Defense Brigade.
CORRECT!V checked the locations of the pictures and followed the path the Russian
BUK took.
CORRECT!V is publishing this investigation in cooperation with the German weekly
magazine Der Spiegel and the Dutch daily newspaper Algemeen Dagblad.
one of the greatest war crimes of modern times and the truth still
I tshasnt
been told. On July 17th 2014 at about 16:20 local time, Malaysia
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Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine. All 298
passengers died, including many children. Who fired the missile? Over
several months the Berlin-based investigative newsroom CORRECT!V
has gathered facts, investigated in eastern Ukraine and Russia, and found
witnesses to the missile launch. The investigation unveiled a clear chain
of evidence. MH17 was downed by a ground-launched BUK missile
launched by a unit of the 53rd Russian Air Defense Brigade from Kursk.
The brigade unit, tasked with protecting Russian tank units, was
operating in mid July on Ukrainian territory without displaying national
emblems.
Less than half an hour after the plane crashed, the commander-in-chief of the proRussian separatists in Donbass, Igor Girkin, celebrated the downing of a Ukrainian
military jet. Girkin posted on his profile on the Russian version of Facebook,
Vkontakte: We warned you, dont fly through our sky.
The post is a success, it quickly received over 2000 likes. Then the post was deleted.
Girkin, formerly a colonel in the Russian intelligence service, later said the post was
fake.
From that point on people began to speculate about why flight MH17 was shot down
on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
American diplomats say the airliner was destroyed by a SA11 (BUK M1) missile fired
from territory controlled by pro-Russian separatists. The separatists reject blame.
Ukraine blames Russia, Russia blames Ukraine. Nobody offers any hard evidence.
The evidence is difficult to find. Eastern Ukraine is a war zone. In April 2014,
irregular forces evicted Ukrainian government officials from their offices in major
eastern Ukrainian towns including Luhansk and Donetzk. Since then Ukraine has
fought back mobilizing troops for attack supported by its air force. Meanwhile
Russia sent tanks forces into eastern Ukraine to reinforce the separatists.
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 corpses on board when it crashed.
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OUR SHOP
MONTHS OF NEGLECT
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For a long time, the crash site was a macabre killing field. The passengers bodies
began to decompose in the hot Ukrainian summer as fighting continued and
people looted the luggage. After nerve-racking diplomatic negotiations, most of the
body parts were recovered and transported to the Netherlands.
Then for months nobody took care of the crash site.
In November a wing of the Boeing 777 stuck up out of a misty, overgrown field. In a
garden lay the broken pieces of a dead passengers record collection next to a piece
of the cockpit and an empty liquor bottle. Sometimes pro-Russian separatists posed
in front of the planes wreckage. The fighters were bored. Journalists rarely came
by anymore. A few days after our visit more parts of the wreckage were collected
and transported to the Netherlands.
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In September the Dutch air traffic authority OVV published an interim report based
on their investigation. The facts were listed without drawing conclusions or placing
blame. This work allows us to reconstruct the final minutes of the 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 is normal. No excited voices, no panic, no disruptions in the
airplane. Thats what the black box shows.
Then the recording abruptly ends at 13:20 UTC, 16:20 local time.
The report says this is when 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 rump broke apart in the air.
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approaching Russian airspace; it was shot down around 40 kilometers from the
border. An attack plane at this altitude and velocity would have to be coming from
Russian airspace, says the air combat expert Horlings.
A ground-to-air missile is programmed to explode just in front of and above the
targeted airplane, says Smid. The plane then flies through a cloud of deadly
shrapnel. And thats just what the Dutch investigators described. They said objects
with high energy that penetrated the airplane from the front and above.
And if it was a surface-to-air missile, officials from Russia and the U.S. say, it was a
BUK M1, an airplane killer developed by the Soviets. 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.
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A BUK-unit consists of four subunits which are often positioned kilometers apart: a
missile launch pad mounted on a tank; a radar car from which soldiers search the
sky for targets; a commando vehicle from which officers give the command to fire.
And a supply vehicle carries additional missiles. The subunits operate separately
and the radar and commando cars do not move with the BUK launch pad. On flat
ground they can be positioned up to 30 kilometers apart, says the air combat expert
Smid.
Another significant point is that the BUK M1 system acquires its targets with an
active radar: radar waves are transmitted into the sky, the enemy is acquired
through the returning echo. But the active radar places the BUK team in danger.
The pilot of the enemy fighter jet knows when he has been spotted. Smid: As soon
as a BUKs radar is opened, an alarm light flashes in the cockpit that fighter pilots
refer to as the Oh shit lamp.
The pilot immediately has all necessary information about the missile type and
position. The BUK team operating the radar is aware of this risk. A deadly duel
ensues: shoot first and survive.
Every second when the radar is on is life-threatening, confirms a former BUK
operator from the Ukrainian army in Kiev. For that reason, the radar is only active
for up to 40 seconds during attack.
Complicating things even more, the BUKs active radar cannot identify the type of
airplane targeted. Fighter jet? Passenger plane? It is difficult for missile operators
to tell. They can only determine whether a friend or foe is approaching. Friends are
airplanes of their own air force. All other aircraft are enemies. Civilian planes such
as MH17 are tagged as enemies. If the plane doesnt respond to the friend-foe
query, or sends the wrong response code, then the air defense team will treat the
aircraft as if it is an enemy aircraft, Horlings said.
The inherent poor design of the Soviet air defense system has had fatal
consequences in the past. In 2001 a misfired surface-to-air missile caused a
catastrophe. The Ukrainian forces mistakenly shot down a Russian civilian plane
near Crimea during a military exercise. All 78 passengers on board the Tupolev
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died. The Ukrainian Security Council took action to prevent a repeat incident:
Ukraine mothballed its surface-to-air missiles including BUKs for several years.*
* In a previous version of this story we incorrectly reported the civilian airliner
was destroyed by a BUK missile. The airliner was destroyed by an S-200 missile.
CORRECT!V corrects mistakes.
THE WHISTLEBLOWER
A graphic feature
Imeetwithaninformant.Heknowseverythingabout
Russianwarfare.
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Now we turn to the issue of tanks and the irresponsible carelessness of the
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. This is a military
fact-of-life for military commanders in all NATO states.
Mobile air defense systems are always found in the vicinity of tanks, confirms a
German army spokesman. But the German Defense Ministry refused a request for
an in-depth interview. Anyone who knows that Russian tanks are accompanied by
BUKs which in turn create a threat for civilian airplanes might face questions
about why they didnt issue a warning.
In an email a German Defense Ministry spokesman cites a statement that the
Federal Government submitted in response to parliamentary questions in August
2014: The Federal Government could not assume that civilian air traffic at the
given altitude would be targeted in attacks.
Were there tanks in eastern Ukraine?
Yes on June 13th, around a month before MH17 was shot down, the US State
Department said Russian tank units crossed the border to Ukraine and were sighted
in the eastern Ukrainian town of Snizhne. NATO also published photographs of
tanks without national markings in this eastern Ukrainian town. Russia denies the
deployment.
In the following weeks the war escalated. Ukrainian fighter jets and helicopters
attacked tanks in the separatists territory, with success: the pro-Russian separatists
were pushed back.
But the Ukrainian air force also suffered losses. On July 12th a Ukrainian attack
helicopter was shot down over eastern Ukraine. Two days later an Antonov An-26
military jet suffered the same fate. Another two days later two Suchoi Su-25 fighter
jets were downed.
Experts say not all of these airplanes could have been hit by shoulder-fired missiles.
The targeting of the two Su-25 and the Antonov suggest the use of complex weapons
systems such as BUKs.
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In response to the new military situation, Ukraine changed its fighter jet strategy. A
Ukrainian Security Council spokesman said fighter jets were later deployed more
cautiously due to losses in the first phase of the anti-terror operations.
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KartendatenOpenStreetMapcontributorsbersichtallerFlgeEinbettenberunsereDaten
The EU states could have warned the airlines. Their military experts knew they
couldnt 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.
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But nothing happened. Germany and the EU were slow 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. In an email response to
questions, a government spokesman cited the previously mentioned statement
which said Germany did not perceive a danger to civil aviation in eastern Ukraine
prior to July 17th.
For the airlines, diverting to longer alternative flight routes entails higher costs.
In an email, a Lufthansa spokesman said the German airline flew over eastern
Ukraine until July 17, 2014. Furthermore, he said that Lufthansa conducted a
security analysis, but only governments possess all the necessary military and
intelligence information required to determine risk. The spokesman said
Lufthansas primary concern is the safety of its passengers. Governments are
responsible for closing air routes, the spokesman said.
A spokeswoman for Germans Foreign Intelligence Service declined to comment for
this story.
Without their knowledge, hundreds of passengers became human shields in the
aerial war zone over eastern Ukraine.
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An unlikely scenario: the Dutch report, which was published about a month after
the Russian press conference, makes no mention of a fighter jet in the vicinity of
MH17. CORRECT!Vs air warfare experts agree, the missile that destroyed MH17
was fired from the ground.
The second scenario: Kartapolov presents satellite pictures that allegedly show a
BUK unit from the Ukrainian army in a field near the village of Zaroshchenske. He
asserts that two points could be seen on July 17th: two BUK launch pads from
which the missile might have been launched. We went for a look.
SUPPORT CORRECT!V
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landscape is flat; we see heaps of coal and rubble along the horizon. Donbass is a
coal-ming region. But most of the mines are closed.
Zaroshchenske is an inconspicuous village. Flat wind-skewed farm buildings lie
along two streets; nearby are vegetable gardens and stables. Behind them is the
path seen on the satellite photos presented in July by the Russian Defense 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 been 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. The rest of the field is unworked and completely overgrown.
The villagers will 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 dont 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 werent here, they dont dare come to these parts.
The lady is an ardent follower of the Russian separatists and buys into the most
abstruse conspiracy theories. She said, 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, she said.
But many villagers have other worries. I have cows that need to be milked every
day, says a women who stands by the gate of her farm in a headscarf and jacket.
She was also in Zaroshchenske 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 one rocket flew over the town at the end of July. We ran into the
basement with the children, a resident said.
The villagers gather on the street. Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything.
There was no BUK missile fired in Zaroshchenske on July 17th 2014. Definitely not
by the Ukrainian army because separatists control the fields around
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Zaroshchenske.
The Russian generals lead is a red herring.
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All details picture for picture from the scene in Eastern Ukraine
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rugged face and exerts the prudence of a technician. He only wears a uniform when
he must.
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 the region of Luhansk.
Who did the tanks belong to?
They didnt 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 defenses in the North of Snizhne because Russia is to the south and
we dont have to worry about anything coming from there.
Also with BUKs?
No. With shoulder-fired missiles. With a maximum range of 5000 meters altitude.
This is war, and the truth is a weapon. But Bondarenko admits that Russian tanks
were in the town and our research has revealed that BUKs must therefore be close
by, at least according to Russian military doctrine. And Bondarenko says that the
separatists established air defense 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 which the deadly missile was allegedly fired at MH17.
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17th 2014. I heard a loud bang, she says, then her neighbor 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 appears and
agrees to talk. The man says he was not in the village in July, but that the roof of his
house was broken when he returned as was the case with many others in the
village. Everyone here has a clear memory of July 17th 2014. Everyone remembers
what they did on that day. Two women and two men come by. A conversation
begins.
A women says: An airplane flew by, well, we dont know if it was a plane. We heard
something, a long sound, then there was a noise. A zumm sound. A long prolonged
swooshing noise. She remembers it well.
Another woman could see thick smoke from the factory. Everyone was alarmed,
she said. Where did the smoke come from? She becomes unsettled. How should we
know what that was? We heard something explode.
A man suddenly says: Over there the railroad ties and the grass were burning. But
then one of the women elbows him in the side and he stops talking. A cell phone
rings, the people walk away.
THE WITNESS
A graphic feature
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Iwalkthroughthevillageoncemore.Itseems
extinct.
Another visit, two days later. Its early. 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. Are you a spy? is his first question after a quick
introduction. The man fled town in August because of the fighting. But on July 17th
2014 he was here. Any question about this day scares him.
I remember, but you know I wont tell you everything about that, Im afraid it
would end badly for me. The CORRECT!V journalist introduces himselfand
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 Ukraine, shot
down in a peaceful airplane.
The man hesitates. Then he starts to talk: They shot it down. The missile flew from
here. We saw it, as it flew.
He points to the railway embankment. A friend of his had already seen the missile.
He called me and said, theres this amazing thing here with four missiles. The
friend will also remain unnamed. He is afraid. These are dangerous times. But one
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question still bothers the witness. They planned everything. I just dont know why
they brought the missile here?
He continues. I was in the yard and heard an explosion, a bang. It was a really loud
bang. The tiles on my roof shook. The bang came from over there, it was easy to
hear. Then there was a long sound. And then a very loud explosion: bang, bang. And
just as I ran out into the road, the plane began to fall. Down the road several
kilometers from here. Do you understand? And you could see it burn.
Asked about the loud bang, the witness had an explanation. It launched from over
there, he said.
When asked whether Russian soldiers or separatists fired the missile, the man
laughs. For him the rocket launch could only be executed by Russian soldiers.
Which miner shoots missiles? No, those were specialists. Do you think I go about
launching 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
defense 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?
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launch pad is missing one missile. This provided proof for his conclusion: the video
proves that the Ukrainians are to blame.
We have a number of questions, said 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
last fired?
But when Bellingcat examined the Russian version of the freeze frame, they
discovered a text bubble had been inserted; when enlarged, it supposedly showed
the text of an advertisement with a car dealers address in Krasnoarmiisk.
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 photo montage.
But by confirming the freeze frame of the launcher was taken near the launch site,
shortly after the launch, the Russian Lieutenant General lent authenticity to many
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 video with the missing missile was actually taken in Luhansk, at the end of road
N21 between the launch site and the Russian border. CORRECT!V investigators
visited the crossroads in Luhansk in November and can confirm: the site is
authentic. Even the advertisement for the car dealership Bogdan is still there,
although it is torn.
To recap: After the destruction of MH17, a BUK launch pad that was missing one
missile drove from Snizhne towards the Russian border.
Once again we want to know: who operated the BUK controls when the missile
launched? Who gave the command to fire? A Russian officer? A Ukrainian
separatist?
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Wallenstein. What we need, we steal, he says. Like a flatbed truck with a white
driving cab?
Then Khodakovskiy says: I know for sure that the popular militia did not shoot
down the Boeing.
Why not?
We dont have and didnt have specialists who can operate such high precision
weapons systems.
Do you have BUKs?
Now I 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 it didnt arrive. And when the tragedy
occurred, they didnt want to be blamed. So as far as I know the missiles were sent
back.
Question after question, he avoids direct answers. Again and again. But he admits
two things: The missile that destroyed MH17 was fired from the area around
Snizhne but not by the separatists. And the separatists cant operate complex
weapons systems such as a BUK.
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. Whats important is
not the action itself, but the perpetrators 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 separatists
relation be to the shooting down of a passenger plane with 298 victims? Complicity?
Shared responsibility?
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The 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 defense brigade are tasked to protect. The Russian soldiers had failed,
and they were under pressure not to allow a repeat incident.
The BUK is outdated, but it is a highly complex and deadly system; its mastery
requires continuous training. During the Soviet era 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.
Russia continues to train soldiers at missile schools, including one in Smolensk.
Many of the former graduates in Ukraine have left the service, but they remember
their time as students.
Its 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
process. Even veterans lose touch 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 served in the 53rd Russian air defense brigade in Kursk. After four
months of training he was allowed to drive the BUK launcher tow vehicle. We reach
him via telephone, Viktor Kusovkin had posted his number on Vkontakte (vk.com).
Firing a BUK? That never even came into question for him. Of course not. You
dont let conscripts fire. That doesnt work. You have to graduate from a military
institute first, said Kusovkin. Thats a pretty difficult task. Only officers can do it.
We asked many experts who could have fired the missile that destroyed MH17. We
spoke to separatist leaders: military commander Khodakovskiy and the deputy
prime minister of the self-named Peoples Republic of Dontzk Andrej Purgin. We
also asked our international air warfare experts and our witnesses at the site of the
launch. We heard the same from graduates of the Institute for Missile Technology
in Kiev and former soldiers of the 53rd Air Defense Brigade in Kursk. They all agree,
the separatists did not have the know-how to fire a BUK missile. There is hardly any
doubt: a Russian officer must have given the order to shoot down MH17.
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the victory and everlasting glory. A wide road was turned into a mile of victory
after the end of the Soviet Union; it has an arch of triumph, a church, tanks and
cannons between the lanes.
Drizzling rain, temperatures just below freezing; the winter is mild and gray. People
are anxious, the fall of the ruble exchange rate has caused worry.
These days it is difficult to approach soldiers and officers. Russias military
institutions are secretive, and now Russian television only shows the Kremlins
propaganda: a fascist coup dtat has occurred in Ukraine; the US is crushing
Russia; foreigners are spies.
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The officers of the 53rd air defense 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 4500 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 caf. Only
small shops that mainly sell cigarettes and liquor.
In the evening the children who live in the complex perform during a concert in the
officers house. They plan to present dances from around the world. For a long
time the room is empty aside from the childrens parents. But then, five minutes
before the show begins, about 60 recruits from a neighboring 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, exerts a commander, no questions.
Is it Okay 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. Then they disappear into the
pinewood forest.
Eventually a businessman puts us in contact with a government official; if anyone
knows something about the missile brigades movements, then it is him and his
colleagues.
We meet Sergej also an alias in an almost empty restaurant. We speak 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 official talks about his work, his former colleagues, the missile
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