On July 17, 2014, 298 people killed in the Donbass with one shot. Eight years later, in November, the International Court will make its decision

July 17, 2014. 17.50 Moscow time. The summary of the Minister of Defense of the “DPR” Igor Strelkov: “In the Torez area, the An-26 aircraft has just been shot down, it is lying somewhere behind the Progress mine. They warned - not to fly in our sky. And here is the video - confirmation of the next "poultry farm". The bird fell by the terrikon, the residential sector did not hook, peaceful people were not injured. "

Soon this message will be deleted. A few hours later, the Security Service of Ukraine will publish negotiations between separatists with the call sign “Major” and “Greek”.

“Greek: Yes, Pash. Well, what do you have there?

Major: In short, damn it, a stupid civil board ...

Greek: I see. And this ... a lot of people there?

Major: That ... wreckage fell right into the yards.

Greek: I see. Is there anything out of weapons?

Major: Nothing at all. Civil things <...>

Greek: Are there documents?

Major: Yes. There is an Indonesian student. From the University of Thompson ... "

Shot

The Boeing Boeing disaster is the most massive murder since the beginning of the armed confrontation in the Donbass. No other tragedy, of which there were hundreds in eight years, did not take so many human lives.

On board the aircraft were 283 passengers and 15 crew members. All of them died.

Flight MH17 Amsterdam-Kuala Lumpur flew out of the capital of the Netherlands at 14.31 Moscow time. It followed to the border of Ukraine at an altitude of 9450 meters, and after its intersection rose to 10,050. By July 17, the battles in the Donbass lasted for the third month, and Ukraine partially closed the sky over its territory. The minimum acceptable flight height, agreed with the European air navigation safety organization, was 9750 meters. The flight MH-17, thus, did not violate any rules.

The plane was supposed to fly 13 hours, but flew only 2 hours 49 minutes. At 17.20 Moscow time, he was shot down by a rocket released from the Buk anti-aircraft missile system. The fragments of the liner and the bodies of the dead were scattered in the territory of 15 kilometers.

“The mining village is scattered. Street on the outskirts. A neatly painted with blue paint of the fence, people with cameras and microphones will move from foot to foot. On July 17, breaking the roof, the body of the woman - the Boeing 777 passenger, fell into the summer kitchen of this house, wrote Zinaida Burskaya, correspondent of the new, after the tragedy. “She lay for me for a day. Then they arrived at her - either the police, or rescuers. They loaded it into a bag, carried it onto the road, after some time they took off. She was the 26th, ”said the mistress of the house.

In five days, rescuers and volunteers gathered in the fields between the scatter, Grabovo and Petropavlovka 282 bodies and 87 fragments, which could belong to 16 people.

They sent them to Kharkov in the refrigerators wagons. From there - to the Netherlands, for identification.

It was not possible to identify the remains of the two dead.

Who is to blame?

The message about the allegedly shot down by the An-26 military transported managed to replicate many Russian media, including state: RIA Novosti, Lifenews, TASS. They did not remove it from the sites and adjust it, even despite the fact that the source - Igor Strelkov - deleted the information.

It is noteworthy that no publication subsequently wrote anything about the transporter: neither whether his fragments were discovered, nor about whether the pilots managed to evacuate. After it became known about the tragedy with Boeing, explanations began to disperse on social networks (very similar to the creative of the “troll factories”), which for some reason published outdated information-about the Ukrainian An-26, not shot down on the 17th, but on July 14 (a military aircraft was really shot down that day). Talking about the relevance of such explanations is pointless.

Their goal is to create the impression that on the day of the tragedy the separatists did not shoot aircraft at all.

As for Boeing, in Russia and in the unrecognized republics of Donbass, many versions of its destruction were put forward.

• Already on the day of the tragedy at 20.52 Moscow time, RIA Novosti, with reference to the press service of the Government of the “Luhansk People's Republic”, said: “Eyewitnesses observing the flight of the Boeing 777 passenger aircraft observed an attack on the Ukrainian Air Force attack aircraft. After that, the passenger plane split into two parts in the air and fell on the territory of the DPR. ”

• Three hours later, information from the supposedly Spanish dispatcher with the nickname of Spainbuca, who seemed to work at the Borispol airport, appeared on the website of Russia Today: Boeing was accompanied by two Ukrainian attack aircraft, they destroyed it. ”

It is characteristic that the Spainbuca dispatcher communicated only with RT and for some reason other media outlets did not give comments. At the Borispol airport, Novaya Gazeta explained that no foreign dispatchers work for them - this is prohibited by law.

• Well, then propaganda completely went into the spraws: she began to say that there were no living people on board (the plane de transported specially prepared for provocation against the “DPR” and “LPR” corpses of passengers from the Kuala-Lumpur-Beijing flight missing on March 8, 2014), or, like Dmitry Kiselev, to show the “news” mutually exclusive in one issue The plots in which the Boeing was first destroyed by the “beech” (only not separatist, but Ukrainian), and then the pilot from N IKOLAEV Vladislav Voloshin .

The defense concern "Almaz-Antei" presented a more textured version. His experts conducted two full-scale experiments, blowing up the 9M38M1 missile not used by Russian “beams” next to the fuselages of Il-76 and Il-88 aircraft. And they came to the conclusion that the Boeing could be shot down just this outdated rocket, because Russian missiles for “beech” should leave traces in the form of butterflies on the aircraft body, which were neither at the Boeing, nor on the fuselage Il-76, allegedly did not form.

According to Almaz-Antei, the passenger airliner was destroyed by the Ukrainian Bucus.

In the International Investigative Group in the case of the death of MH17, the arguments of Almaz-Antei were accepted. At the same time, the head of the investigative group Fred Westerbeke in an exclusive interview with Novaya Gazeta noted : “What Almaz-Antey did is a small technical element, part of the huge investigation that we conduct. They conducted an experiment, blew up the rocket near the plane and came to some conclusions. Well, we used their data.

But we ourselves conducted the same experiment, and also collected a lot of other information: photos, videos, intercepted telephone conversations and, importantly, witnesses that we saw Buk.

This is much more than Almaz Antei has. Although I am not going to judge whether their conclusions are fair or not. ”

Interestingly, at the time of the interview, the Dutch investigators already knew that there were traces in the form of butterflies on Boeing.

On September 26, 2016, ten months after the presentation of the Almaz-Antei version, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation held a briefing, during which the head of the radio engineering troops of the military-space forces Andrei Koban said that Russian radars did not record foreign objects next to Boeing: neither missiles, nor aircraft. This contradicted to all previously put forward versions, and two days after the briefing, the chief designer of the radar complex of the Lianozovsky Electromechanical Plant, Viktor Meshcheryakov, was forced to explain: according to him, the “absence of objects” on the recordings of radar stations allegedly indicates that the rocket was launched from the territory of Ukraine.

Like, the technical capabilities of Russian equipment do not allow us to conclude whether the missile was launched from territories south or west of the disaster point.

The Ukrainian side, it is worth saying, has always been one version of events: the separatists shot down the passenger plane. Discrepancies are only where they came from: whether they brought into working condition the one that stood on the repair in the captured military unit A-1402 in Donetsk , or received from abroad.

Investigation of "New"

In parallel with state bodies of different countries and the international investigative group, the “New Gazeta” also conducted its investigation of the tragedy. Our correspondents traveled to the entire disaster area, talked with eyewitnesses, experts, investigators, participants in the combat both from Ukraine and from the unrecognized republics, and also studied the negotiations of pilots with dispatchers and other documents.

According to our data, Buk, from which, probably, a shot was carried out on Boeing, could arrive in the Donbass from the territory of Russia on July 14, 2014. We assume that he drove into the “LPR” through the Severnoye checkpoint located next to the city of Krasnodon. He moved through the territory of Donbass only in the dark, waiting for daylight hours in shelters. At the same time, in the "LDNR" he came "empty", that is, without ammunition.

The interlocutors of Novaya Gazeta in the “DPR” assure that the Buka crew received the rocket already from the separatists themselves. Maybe-from the very captured military unit A-1402 in Donetsk.

On the night of July 15 to July 16, the missile complex allegedly arrived in the Snezhnoye village, from where, according to Kyiv and international investigators, a shot was carried out on a civilian airliner.

The Russian side approved (and continues to assert) that they shot at Boeing from another village - Zaraschensky, who was under the control of the Ukrainian military. However, the locals themselves, in a conversation with the Novaya correspondent, said that they did not have any military personnel, and even more than Buka in the village.

“ - these are nonsense! My husband traveled around by car, the traces had to stay, he drove, looked through everything, but there is even no trace! Even from the bicycle. How can it be said that from Zarashchensky [shot]? There was nothing! The most ... nonsense, real.

- We traveled everything, looked at. No traces! All this is nonsense that the “beech” shot! We would hear, but we have not heard.

“Only when these same grenades flew through us, we heard, and then nothing was flying!”

Residents of the village of Grabovo, who saw a shot, also pointed out that he was made from the southeast direction controlled by the separatists.

But what the inhabitants of the snowy said:

“ - Where did the sound come from?

-Somewhere in the district. But the cotton was like something, maybe something fell or exploded. It was like that. Well, soon we learned [about "Boeing"]. "

At the same time, in the process of investigation, we came across evidence in favor of the Russian version. For example, a confidential document prepared by Russian military engineers not intended for printing: it said that the rocket could not be launched from snowy because the aircraft received damage uncharacteristic for a collision at oncoming courses (as, according to the authors of the document, would be if the separatists shot).

The document, of course, raises questions. But it contains a fundamentally important conclusion: Boeing was shot down precisely by a “bean”.

Military engineers have denied the main version of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, which believes that the aircraft was destroyed by the Su-25 Air Force attack aircraft.

The version of the TFR "New Gazeta" also checked. Investigators refer to the testimony of the Ukrainian corporal Evgeny Agapov, who surrendered to Russia and said that Boeing was knocked out by the captain Vsevolod Voloshin who served with him in one part. According to him, the pilot returning to the base on July 17 was very excited and the only thing he could say was “the plane is not the same.”

“Knowing a little this pilot ... He had just a frightened reaction, inadequate. Could from fright or in order to revenge rockets in Boeing. Maybe he took him for some other combat aircraft, ”said Agapov.

In Kyiv, however, they answered the accusations: Voloshin was not on the departures on July 17 - the day before, his plane stood for repairs.

“Those who think a little in the theory of guidance must understand: to bring the Su-25 at its maximum speed of 700 km/h per aircraft flying at a speed of 900 km/h per hour, only a phenomenon is capable of”,

- In a conversation with the "New", deputy commander of the air command "Center" Oleg Zakharchuk .

Which of the parties is guilty of the tragedy, of course, should decide the court. He goes now - in the Hague. Whom the international investigation suspects the most terrible crime of the Donbass conflict, which the defendants themselves and relatives of the victims say and what evidence sounds at meetings - in our next newsletter.

The main materials of Novaya Gazeta on the investigation of the MH17 tragedy:
"Thought the dolls." Report from the site of the Boeing fall. The first evidence of eyewitnesses.

"There was no" beech "on our field." The evidence of the inhabitants of villages, from which the rocket could allegedly be launched.

Flight MH17. Where and from what they shot at the plane and why it ended up in the defeat zone. A large study of Novaya Gazeta.

“The task is to bring the MH17 case to court.” Exclusive interview with the head of the international investigative group.

"The case of the I -Treasures." The point of view "Almaz-Antei", on which the Russian side is based.

"The rocket flew from the northeast and exploded on the counterclaim." An interview with a military scientist who has repeatedly launched a “beech” that he thinks about reports of colleagues from the Russian military -industrial complex.

"Facts, fakes and the silence of officers." About why Moscow is not afraid of the results of an official investigation on MH17.

"We checked the trajectories." Study of the aircraft designer Mark Solonin. Part 1.

"Mutual exclusive theses poured one after another." Study of the aircraft designer Mark Solonin. Part 2.