Ukrainian warplane shot down Malaysian Flight MH17: Purported witnesses
A piece of the wreckage of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 is
presented to the press at the Gilze Rijen Airbase in the Netherlands,
October 13, 2015. (Photo by AFP)
Malaysian Flight MH17, which
went down in eastern Ukraine some two years ago, was shot down by a
Ukrainian fighter jet, not a ground-to-air missile, people claiming to
have witnessed the incident say.
A BBC documentary titled
“The Conspiracy Files: Who Shot Down MH17?” which will be aired on May
3, includes interviews with people who claim to have seen the aircraft
being shot down by a Ukrainian warplane.
German investigative journalist Billy Six talked to 100 eyewitnesses, seven of whom said they saw a warplane.
“One
of them even told me how he saw it launch a missile. It was like a
small line in the sky going into the clouds. Then he heard the big
boom,” Six said.
Another eyewitness, Natasha
Beronina, said, “It was summer, harvest time. We heard a bang. At first
we saw black smoke and two planes. … One flew straight on and the other
one turned round when the bang happened and flew back from where it had
come.”
Flight MH17 crashed on July 17, 2014 over Ukraine’s
volatile Donetsk region while en route from the Dutch city of Amsterdam
to the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur. All 298 passengers and crew on
board the plane were killed.
Almost two years into the incident, the circumstances under which it happened remain undetermined.
Ukraine
and Western powers have been accusing Moscow of having been involved in
the downing of the plane, arguing that it was shot down by a
Russian-made BUK missile fired from the town of Snizhne, which is
controlled by pro-Russia forces in eastern Ukraine. Russia has denied
any involvement in the deadly incident.
Following the disaster,
Russian media reported the name of a pilot they said was responsible for
shooting the plane down, identifying him as Captain Vladislav Voloshin
and saying that he is based at a southern Ukraine airfield. Voloshin,
however, has denied the allegation. A
picture taken on July 26, 2014 shows flowers left by the parents of an
Australian passenger on the wreckage of the Malaysia Airlines MH17 near
the Ukrainian village of Hrabove in the Donetsk region. (Photo by AFP)‘CIA-backed operation’
The
BBC documentary also explores another hypothesis: that the shooting
down of the jet was a CIA plot that sought to pin blame on Russia.
Private
investigator Sergey Sokolov deployed more than 100 of his agents to
investigate the site of the crash and examine evidence. He said they
found no shrapnel from a Russian missile, adding that he was “sold” a
phone intercept between two CIA agents that implies they masterminded to
plan two bombs on the plane.
“The driving force of the operation
were CIA agents and the Dutch security service also had a part to play
as the bombs were put on the plane in Holland and this couldn’t have
been done anywhere else,” Sokolov said.
“This terrorist act was a
pretext for firstly intensifying sanctions on Russia, secondly to show
the world that Russia is a barbarian country and thirdly to strengthen
the presence of NATO in Europe, particularly Ukraine,” he added.
Ukraine’s
eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk have witnessed deadly clashes
between pro-Russia forces and the Ukrainian army since Kiev launched
military operations in April 2014 to crush pro-Moscow protests there.
The crisis has left around 9,200 people dead and over 21,000 others injured, according to the United Nations.
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