DISINFO: MH 17: Buk could only have been fired from Ukrainian frontline

DISINFORMATION CASE DETAILS

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MH17

DISINFO: MH 17: Buk could only have been fired from Ukrainian frontline

SUMMARY

The manufacturer of the BUK missile, the arms company Almaz-Antey itself conducted a field test. They exploded a Buk missile next to an aircraft fuselage, which looked similar to the Boeing that had been fired upon. The goal was to determine the angle from which the 2014 missile hit the Malaysia Airlines aircraft and thus locate every location from which the missile was fired. The conclusion was that the missile could only have been fired from one area of the front line controlled by Ukraine.

RESPONSE

The claims by Buk manufacturer Almaz-Antey were debunked already in 2015 by Bellingcat. One of the many recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about the downing of MH17. On the 19th of June, 2019, the Public Prosecution Service of the Netherlands announced it will prosecute four suspects - Russian military and intelligence officers Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinskiy, Oleg Pulatov and Ukrainian national Leonid Kharchenko, commander of the military combat unit in Donetsk, for bringing down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 on the 17th of July 2014 killing all 298 passengers and crew. The decision was made on the basis of the investigation conducted by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), consisting of law enforcement agencies from Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, Ukraine and the Netherlands. The criminal investigation of the JIT has been ongoing since 2014. On 28 September 2016, the JIT announced that flight MH17 was shot down by a missile from the 9M38 series, which was launched by a BUK TELAR system. The system was transported from the Russian Federation to an agricultural field near the town of Pervomaiskyi in Eastern Ukraine, from where the missile was launched. After firing, the system - with 1 missing missile - went back to the Russian Federation. On the 24th of May 2018, the JIT announced its conclusion the BUK TELAR used to shoot down MH17 came from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, a unit of the Russian armed forces from Kursk in the Russian Federation.

Disclaimer

Cases in the EUvsDisinfo database focus on messages in the international information space that are identified as providing a partial, distorted, or false depiction of reality and spread key pro-Kremlin messages. This does not necessarily imply, however, that a given outlet is linked to the Kremlin or editorially pro-Kremlin, or that it has intentionally sought to disinform. EUvsDisinfo publications do not represent an official EU position, as the information and opinions expressed are based on media reporting and analysis of the East Stratcom Task Force.

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