UPDATE: Below is the official complete video of the Russian Ministry of Defence presentation, in English:
Amidst the current whirlwind of the news, there comes a highly-important press-conference from the Russian Ministry of Defence, which sheds additional light on who shot down MH-17 over Donbass in 2014.
Here are a few highlight quotes from the overview of the briefing.
Serial numbers of missile that downed MH17 show it was produced in 1986, owned by Ukraine
Speaking to journalists, Gen. Nikolay Parshin showed a document trail of the Buk missile. According to the documents, some of which have been declassified for the presentation, it was produced at a military plant in Dolgoprudny in the Moscow region in 1986.
The missile was shipped from the plant on December 29, 1986 and delivered to military unit 20152 located in what is now Ukraine. It is now called 223rd anti-aircraft defense regiment of the Ukrainian armed forces, the report said. The unit took part in Kiev’s crackdown on rebels in eastern Ukraine in June 2014, the general said.
Serial number on engine and nozzle of the missile.
Missile shipment records found in Russia.
The Russian military also challenges video footage used by the UK-based group Bellingcat, which calls itself a citizen journalism organization, to back its allegations about the delivery of the Buk launcher from Russia. The Defence Ministry showed a video clip with some of the footage, highlighting inconsistencies, which it said proved that the footage had been manipulated to place images of the launcher into background which were not in the original.
The Bellingcat investigation was featured in the latest update by Dutch prosecutors involved in the MH17 investigation, prompting them to directly accuse Russia of providing the launcher and the missile. The Russian military said it decided after this to study the purported trail of photo and video evidence showing the path of the launcher in detail. The Russian video showed an example of how an Abrams tank can be shown to be carried by a trailer in the streets of Ukraine in the same way.
Information on a Col. Ruslan Grinchak shown by the Russian military.
The third part of the presentation was what the Russian officials called a record of intercepted communications of Ukrainian officials discussing, in 2016, the risk of flying through restricted airspace over Ukraine. Among a barrage of complaints one phrase says unless the restrictions are respected “we’ll f***ing f**k up another Malaysian Boeing”.
The Russian military say the complaints came from Col. Ruslan Grinchak, who serves in a brigade responsible for radar control in Ukrainian airspace. His unit tracked the MH17 flight in 2014, so he may have information which is not publicly available about the disaster, and his outburst may have been factual rather than hyperbolic, they suggested.
Gen. Igor Konashenkov, who hosted the briefing, said that Ukraine failed to provide radar data from its stations to the Dutch investigators. He also suggested that archive documents from the Ukrainian unit, which received the Buk missile back in 1986, would be of use to the probe, unless Kiev claims that they are no longer available. He stressed rules are in place which mean that such documents should still be stored in Ukraine.
And speaking of the ignominious Bellingcat…
The British independent investigative Journalist and truthspeaker Graham Phillips created a documentary, unmasking Bellingcat:
¿ Bellingcat ¿ 5 Facts You Need to Know About Bellingcat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J7zdJPyAN8
However, after just about 1200 views, the Bellingcat reached out to The Guardian to block the video and stop the truth about Bellingcat’s underhanded deceptions from becoming known by people.
Graham previously wrote an article on Bellingcat in his 2016 report Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat, Who is He? Everything You Need to Know…