The wreckage of the Boeing that crashed near Donetsk will be exhibited in Yeisk as part of an exhibition dedicated to the events in eastern Ukraine. Activists of the Afghan warrior movement “Combat Brotherhood” are going to do this for the 70th anniversary of the Victory

Boeing plane crash site near Donetsk. File photo (Photo: Global Look Press)

A piece of the Malaysian Boeing that crashed in Donbass will be exhibited in the Museum of Military Glory in Yeisk (Krasnodar Territory), which members of the local branch of the “Combat Brotherhood” are going to open on the 70th anniversary of the Victory. One of the exhibitions will be dedicated to military operations in Donbass.

On April 2, the newspaper “Council of Azov Region” published an article on the front page entitled “And with a fragment of the Malaysian Boeing...”. The text said that a member of the “Combat Brotherhood” in Yeisk, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, Alexander Shabanov, accompanied a shipment of humanitarian aid that was sent to the residents of Donbass. The photograph published by the newspaper (the publication does not have a website) depicts a man (the article indicates that this is Shabanov himself), and in his hands he is holding a piece of an airplane with the name of the airline (only the word Malasya is clearly visible). The text indicates that residents donated a fragment of the plane “in gratitude for the delivered food, clothing and medicine.”

The head of the Yeisk branch of the “Combat Brotherhood”, Finat Shaikhulin, confirmed to RBC that the fragment was brought from Donbass and will be included in the exhibition dedicated to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. He added that the museum of military glory will be opened with public money, and the exhibition itself will be dedicated to “the horrors that happen to the residents of Donbass” due to the fault of the Ukrainian authorities.

Screenshot of an article from the newspaper “Council of Azov Region” from the website of the BBC Russian Service

Shaikhulin told RBC that the wreckage was donated by residents of the village of Rassypnoye, Torez District (the plane crashed in this area). When asked whether representatives of the organization planned to hand over the wreckage to law enforcement agencies, Shaikhulin replied that there are quite a lot of such fragments of the plane in Rassypnoye - they lie on the ground, on the roofs of houses. Shaikhulin suggested that OSCE representatives and experts from the Netherlands “seem not to notice them.” In a conversation with Echo of Moscow, a representative of the Fighting Brotherhood said that the Boeing fragment was also accepted as a sign of confirmation that the Donetsk militias were not to blame for the plane crash.

In a conversation with the BBC Russian Service , the author of the article, Irina Boyko, said that she personally met Shabanov, who delivered a fragment of the plane to Yeisk. According to Boyko, when exactly the resident received the fragment, he did not say, but added that “he simply received it from the residents as an exhibit for the museum.” The publication’s journalist clarified that she learned about the broadcast of the fragment from Alexander Sladkov’s military program on the Rossiya TV channel.

The editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Council of Azov Region" Valentina Dolgikh, in a conversation with RBC, said that after the fragment was demonstrated publicly, its fate is unknown. “I can’t say [where he is now], where they [members of the “Combat Brotherhood”] took him, they probably transferred him somewhere. They probably declared it. No one knows his fate after that,” she said. Shaikhulin refused to say where the fragment is now located. Dolgikh clarified that a fragment of the plane will be presented in the museum “as evidence of the outrage” that is happening there.

Shaikhulin found it difficult to make a guess as to which part of the plane the fragment was from. He added that in the past he was a military pilot, and the crashed airliner was intended for civilian flights.

Dolgikh, in a conversation with RBC, expressed surprise that the transfer of the fragment attracted so much attention. She said that those who traveled from Yeisk to Donbass and helped the Ukrainians often brought shell fragments and grenades from there. According to her, residents of southeastern Ukraine give them as gratitude because they have nothing else and “they don’t know how to express their attitude towards those who find it with such difficulty to get to these villages.”

The publication of the newspaper "Council of the Azov Region" indicates that the delivery of humanitarian aid to the residents of Donbass "is still a difficult matter." “It’s difficult to collect help and deliver it, but it’s even more difficult to get across the border. This is what is exhausting,” said Shabanov.

Boeing Malasia Airlines, which was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed near Donetsk on July 17, 2014. The plane crash killed 298 people. Kyiv and the militia blame each other for the tragedy.

Ukrainian authorities believe the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile launched from rebel-controlled territory. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, in the area of the disaster there were units of the Ukrainian army with a Buk-M1 type air defense system. According to the second version of the Ministry of Defense, on the day of the tragedy there was a Ukrainian Air Force attack aircraft near the plane. The Dutch Safety Board (DSB) in September 2014 published a preliminary report on the investigation into the crash of a Malaysian Boeing in eastern Ukraine, which states that the aircraft “disintegrated in mid-air, probably as a consequence of structural damage caused by being hit by a large number of high-energy facilities." The final report will be ready in the summer of 2015.

The fragment of the Boeing that crashed in Donbass will be shown in the Museum of the “Combat Brotherhood”