Last year, on May 24, 2018, the Dutch-led Joint Investigative Team (JIT) concluded, as part of its international probe, that the anti-aircraft missile system that was used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, came from Russia.
Dutch prosecutor Fred Westerbeke said in a statement during a press briefing on May 24 in Utrecht province city of Bunnik that the Buk missile system that had allegedly originated from a Russian military base in Kursk, some 216 kilometers from Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv, had belonged to the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade.
The Dutch led the international investigation as the majority of passengers (63 percent) on board were from Holland. Other countries that were part of the JIT included Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine.
“The JIT is convinced that the BUK-TELAR that was used to down MH17, originates from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, … a unit of the Russian army from Kursk in the Russian Federation. The JIT reached this conclusion after extensive comparative research,” The Netherlands Public Prosecution Service said on its website.
Russia’s Defense Ministry denied that the Buk system ever crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border in a statement released that same day. “The Defense Ministry of Russia from the first hours after the tragedy and in the future officially denied the Ukrainians’ insinuations about the alleged involvement of Russian servicemen in the catastrophe over the skies of Ukraine and has provided relevant evidence to the Dutch investigative team,” Moscow said, as cited by Kremlin-controlled RIA Novosti.
The JIT’s findings show that a Buk M938 was fired near Torez in Donetsk Oblast, in an area controlled by Russia-led forces, and later was hurriedly returned across the border to Russia.
British-based open-source data sleuth Bellingcat had arrived at the same conclusion as the JIT. Bellingcat shared its findings with the JIT, also identifying Russia’s 53rd Brigade out of Kursk as the unit that transported the Buk system to and from Ukraine, based on geolocation technology, video and photographic analysis.
Ukraine’s intelligence services had provided a trove of evidence to the JIT, including intercepted phone calls.
Bellingcat and The Insider announced they would hold a news conference at The Hague on May 25, 2018, to release an updated report on their findings.
During the course of Russia’s war against Ukraine, the MH17 tragedy unified the European Union’s response to Russia through expanded sanctions to include an arms embargo and financial restrictions on Russian businesses, with the U.S. applying its own set of measures.
Russia has offered numerous “explanations” for the plane’s downing, including the involvement of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency or Ukraine’s Air Force and providing obfuscating versions of the event. Moscow-based surveys of the Russian population showed that only 2 percent of respondents believed that MH17 was downed by Russia or its military proxies in the Donbas.
Source: “Dutch-led investigators name Russian military unit in 2014 downing of MH17,” by Mark Raczkiewycz, The Ukrainian Weekly, May 27, 2018.