Buk Missile Launcher
How long is it possible to conceal a
war crime? On July 17th, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17 was torn out of
the sky while flying over eastern Ukraine. Immediate speculation pointed to a
Soviet-designed missile system, and as the investigation into the cause of the
crash continues, those early suspicions have been confirmed. Now that there's a
rough consensus on what shot down the civilian plane, the argument has
moved on to whom. Open-source intelligence analysts Bellingcat yesterday
released a report
linking that missile launch to Russia's 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade.
Part of what makes this investigation messy is that
it takes place during the middle of a proxy war. Following the Euromaidan
movement that drove out a Russian-backed president out of Kiev, Russia
responded aggressively to Ukrainian assertions of independence, first by taking
full control of the entire Crimean peninsula, and then by supporting
pro-Russian separatists around the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. The Buk
missile launcher and system that shot down MH-17 is significantly more advanced
hardware than armed rebels usually get, consisting of multiple military
vehicles, with radar systems and powerful anti-air missiles. Previous efforts
by Bellingcat placed the key Buk launcher at the site and time of MH-17's
untimely demise. This new report focuses on the Russian soldiers to whom the
missile launcher belongs.
Bellingcat's report is entitled “Potential Suspects
and Witnesses from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade,” and in 115 pages it
details the unit that had the culpable system, evidence of them in Ukraine, its
movements, the members, and finally, it ends with blame placed squarely, not at
any rogue operative, but the government of Russia itself. From the report summary:
We provide partially anonymized information
regarding 14 officers of the 2nd Battalion of the 53rd Brigade, including the
commanders of the Buk unit vehicles within the battalion. Sergey Borisovich
Muchkaev, the commander of the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, is closely
detailed, along with his superiors, including Aleksey Zolotov of the Air
Defense of the 20th Guards Army and Andrey Kokhanov of the Air Defense of the
Western Military District. Ultimately, responsibility for the downing of MH17
from a weapon provided and possibly operated by the Russian military lies with
the Ministry of Defense and the Supreme Commander of the Russian Armed Forces,
President Vladimir Putin.
Findings from this report were shared with the
international Joint Investigative Team responsible for an official account of
what happened to MH-17. With the information from this open-source research,
they may be able to follow the lead as far as it goes.
From:
Popular Science
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