The names of those suspected of being involved in shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, released on June 19 by the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team probing the atrocity will, perhaps, be unfamiliar to the public at large.
But they should ring loud and clear bells with anyone who has been following the search for the identities of those responsible for shooting an airliner out of the sky on July 17, 2014 over eastern Ukraine, killing 298 innocent passengers and crew.
The Kremlin will, of course, rubbish the findings of the JIT and will any case refuse to hand over the named suspects for trial (charges against them were also announced on June 19.) There is also very little prospect of them ever facing justice: According to the Russian constitution, no Russian citizens can be extradited to undergo trial outside of Russia. The Russian justice system is subservient to the Kremlin regime, as has been proved time after time. And anyway, the regime cannot allow any of its minions to face a proper court, as their testimony could extend the bloody trail of MH17 evidence to the office of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin himself – he is ultimately responsible for BUK 332 of Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, based in Kursk, being in Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine on that terrible summer day in 2014.
The Kremlin and its useful idiot allies in the West, given the weight of evidence presented by investigators, will offer outlandish counter theories for the shootdown, which will only have one thing in common: Ukraine will be to blame.
The Kremlin and its supporters will also attempt to undermine the legitimacy and authority of the Dutch-led investigation team, and the International Criminal Court in the Hague, where the suspects are likely to be tried in absentia.
Given that the suspects, if found guilty, will probably never have to pay for their crimes, and that the Kremlin regime will never accept responsibility for the MH17 atrocity, some might ask what the point is in pursuing the case, which has poisoned relations between Moscow and the West. Isn’t it just a waste of time and money?
Well, for one thing, to ignore the case would be doing the Kremlin’s work for it – undermining international law and the legal institutions of the civilized world.
But perhaps more importantly, it would be to concede defeat to the Kremlin’s warped worldview, in which there is no truth but that which is expedient for the Kremlin, and in which Orwellian doublethink allows you to believe that a Ukrainian SU-25, flying high above its operational ceiling, and carrying a missile more than a third of its own length and incapable of being launched from an aircraft, could have shot down MH17.
Rather than get lost in the Kremlin’s lies, there is a test that can be used to tell which side, the JIT or the Kremlin, is telling the truth about MH17.
In the hours after the shoot down, open-source investigators like the U.K.-based Bellingcat were gathering evidence about the incident. It was quickly established that a BUK anti-missile system, which had been sighted in Torez, in Donetsk Oblast, shortly before the shootdown, was likely responsible for the shootdown – some of the MH17 debris showed characteristic damage from such a missile. Combing through photographs and video evidence, the group established the route the BUK, found to be No. 332 of Russia’s 53rd Anti-Missile Brigade, had taken from Kursk in Russia to eastern Ukraine. The JIT’s own investigation has confirmed Bellingcat’s findings.
Each nugget of information uncovered by Bellingcat added more weight and detail to its version of events, without ever contradicting the basic premise: MH17 was shot down by a BUK missile system that had come from Russia.
Russia’s own account of the incident has, in contrast, changed constantly as new evidence has come to light. The Kremlin has put forward, via its propaganda mouthpieces, several contradictory theories – the aim not being to uncover the truth but rather to bury it in a mass of confusion. Predictably, Kremlin supporters have also attempted to undermine Bellingcat and the JIT, and refused to cooperate with the Dutch-led investigation. Its aim, as ever, is to fog up the issue with so many lies that the truth is harder to discern.
So knowing the truth about MH17, established by careful, painstaking investigations, is thus a kind if victory against the brutal Kremlin regime. It is also some comfort even if those guilty of the atrocity are never held to account.
We know who you are.
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